Field Ion and Field Desorption Microscopy: Principles and Applications

Heterogeneous Surfaces as Structure and Particle Size Libraries of Model Catalysts

“…In field emission based microscopies [field electron microscopy (FEM) and field ion microscopy (FIM)] such tips have been used as samples themselves, also serving as models of individual catalytic nanoparticles [ 46 ]. However, the apexes of such nanotips exhibit individual facets of only a few nanometers in size, which makes surface analysis very difficult [ 47 ].…”

“…Such a well-defined precious metal tip can then serve as another type of surface structure library for model catalysis. FIM (with atomic resolution) cannot be applied to such crystals, due to the large radius of tip curvature [ 46 , 47 ], but FEM (spatial resolution ~ 2 nm) is well-suited as spatially-resolved examination method. Since FEM, like PEEM, is a work function based microscopy (with a certain influence of the local field distribution), the concept of kinetics by imaging can be applied and first results for H 2 oxidation on Rh were already obtained [ 48 ].…”