| Abstract: | Nanostructuring of Copper Surfaces by means of Oxygen induced Reconstructions For metal single crystals the topography of vicinal surfaces can be changed in a controlled fashion by means of oxygen adsorption. This self‐organized phenomenon will be demonstrated for several vicinal copper surfaces. For densely packed copper surfaces with terrace lengths of ≤ 1 nm oxygen adsorption causes a doubling of terrace length and step height, whereas an oxygen‐induced mesoscopic faceting into periodic nano‐stripes is observed for regular monoatomic stepped surfaces with longer terraces. The width of the resulting nano‐stripes depends on the orientation of the clean vicinal surfaces and values of 10 to 50 nm have been observed. The thermal stability of the surfaces is found to increase with the stripes width, some structures are stable for temperatures up to 800 K. |
