Hydrogen adsorption and oxide formation on platinum single crystal electrodes

Abstract

The adsorption of hydrogen on Pt(100), (110) and (111) electrodes from 0.5 M H2SO4 has been investigated by measuring potentiodynamic adsorption and desorption spectra. Distinct differences in the adsorption behaviour of H on the various faces of single crystalline Pt are found and the results are compared with those previously reported in the literature. The quality of the single crystal surface was checked by RHEED. In addition, the influence of the substrate crystallographic orientation on the surface oxide formation was studied, where again differences on the three low index faces of Pt are observed.