Nano-SMSI on Bimetallic FePt Clusters

Nano-strong metal-support interaction is observed in this work for bimetallic FePt nanoclusters on graphene/Rh(111). FePt clusters were prepared by successively depositing 1.27 ML Fe and 0.14 ML Pt on the graphene/Rh(111) substrate. Oxidation of Fe was achieved by CO dissociation, while CO was simultaneously used as a probe molecule to gather information about the clusters' structure. After UHV annealing to 550 K, encapsulation of Pt with an Fe oxide layer and a strong decrease of the chemisorption capacity of the clusters was found. Further increase of the temperature to 900 K leads to the decomposition of the Fe oxide layer and the intercalation of Fe. Besides, the formation of an FePt alloy was observed at elevated temperature.

Automated summary

In this work, nano-strong metal-support interaction is observed for bimetallic FePt nanoclusters on graphene/Rh(111) substrate. The encapsulation of Pt with an Fe oxide layer and the formation of an FePt alloy were found at elevated temperature.