In the case of titanium alloys, the oxide layers on their surfaces strongly influence biocompatibility and corrosion resistance. To improve these characteristics, properties of oxide layers prepared by various methods on different base materials were examined. In this work, samples of widely used biomaterials, CP titanium grade 2 and alloy Ti6Al4V, were compared with recently developed β‐titanium alloy Ti‐39 wt% Nb. On the samples from these materials, the thermal (600°C/8 hr/atmospheric air) and anodic (1‐M H2SO4/100 V/1 hr) oxide layers were prepared. The change of surface color was observed. The surface topography of oxidized samples was observed using scanning electron microscopy. The thickness of oxide layers was measured and observed on the cross‐sectional samples. The further analysis of oxide layers surfaces was conducted using X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. The growth of hydroxyapatite for further comparison of oxide layers was realized in Hank' balanced salt solution.

Doping cerium oxide with additives is a common procedure that improves stability of cerium oxide-based catalysts. We prepared fluorine-doped cerium oxide samples in the form of inverse catalysts on Rh(111) and compared their electronic, chemical, and morphological properties with fluorine-free CeOX samples. By means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), we followed the formation of oxygen vacancies and the depletion of fluorine after exposure of CeOXFY to CO and O2 gases at elevated temperatures. According to Ce 3d XPS spectra, the ability to create oxygen vacancies is not altered by fluorine atoms. Our results from low energy electron diffraction (LEED) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) show that fluorine affects mainly the morphology of the layers. Unlike the CeO2 layers, fluorine-doped samples form 3D islands, which are partially rotated with respect to Rh [11̅0] direction due to stretching of the lattice constant caused by cerium oxide reduction. The possibility for creation stable Ce3+ sites without reducing the oxygen storage capacity makes anion doping a perspective tool for defect engineering in cerium oxide-based catalysts.

Rhodium (Rh) is used predominantly in the automotive industry for three-way catalysis (TWC). CO oxidation efficiency during TWC can be significantly improved by adding CeO2-active support known for its oxygen storage capacity (OSC). In this work, the CO oxidation mechanism of Rh nanoparticles on CeO2(111) and CeO2(110) was studied with the focus on oxygen exchange between catalytic particles and active support. This exchange is analyzed utilizing isotopically labeled 18O. We prepared ∼20 Å oriented CeO2 layer by evaporation on Rh(111) and Rh(110) single crystals followed by Rh deposition of 10–20 nm particles. These model catalysts are studied by means of TDS, MB adsorption, TPR, AFM, LEED, and XPS. The reaction achieves higher performance on Rh/CeO2(110). It is explained by the slightly weaker CO–Rh bond and the higher oxygen exchange activity. CO desorption energies at zero coverage are 2.39(7) × 10–19 J for Rh/CeO2(111) and 2.28(7) × 10–19 J for Rh/CeO2(110). We observed the diffusion of oxygen from molecular beams into the CeO2 support and measured a contribution of CeO2 oxygen to the reaction. During low-pressure reaction cycles with temperature range 300–770 K, the produced CO2 contains 53% of oxygen from the support for Rh/CeO2(111) and 70% for Rh/CeO2(110).

Extreme ultraviolet (XUV) capillary-discharge lasers (CDLs) are a suitable source for the efficient, clean ablation of ionic crystals, which are obviously difficult to ablate with conventional, long-wavelength lasers. In the present study, a single crystal of cesium iodide (CsI) was irradiated by multiple, focused 1.5-ns pulses of 46.9-nm radiation delivered from a compact XUV-CDL device operated at either 2-Hz or 3-Hz repetition rates. The ablation rates were determined from the depth of the craters produced by the accumulation of laser pulses. Langmuir probes were used to diagnose the plasma plume produced by the focused XUV-CDL beam. Both the electron density and electron temperature were sufficiently high to confirm that ablation was the key process in the observed CsI removal. Moreover, a CsI thin film on MgO substrate was prepared by XUV pulsed laser deposition; a fraction of the film was detected by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.