ABSTRACT Structure and Thermodynamics of Model Catalytic Oxide Surfaces

The atomic scale structure of crystalline surfaces plays an important role in the overall properties of materials systems, especially those relating to heterogeneous catalysis, thin film growth, and the increasingly miniaturized world of micro elec-trical mechanical systems (MEMS). Nanoscale engineering of materials has become commonplace and as technologies begin to emerge on smaller and smaller length scales, surface properties become increasingly more important relative to those of the bulk. Only through knowledge of the surface structure of materials can one truly understand the nature of the processes that play out on them. The research described in this manuscript involves a combination of computational (Direct Methods) and experimental (TEM) methods for the investigation of the surface structure and thermodynamics of two model heterogeneous catalytic ox-ides, α-Fe2O3 (the mineral hematite) and SrTiO3. iii A new flux system has been developed for the growth of single crystal α-Fe2O3. The effect of ion bombardment and annealing on the (0001) surface of hematite wa