Impact-collision ion-scattering spectrometry studies of the VC0.8(111)-(8 × 1) surface

Abstract

We use impact-collision ion-scattering spectrometry (ICISS) to verify that the (8 × 1) reconstructed surface of VC0.8(111) arises from the superposition of a rectangular surface vanadium layer on top of the hexagonal bulk, in agreement with a surface structure proposed earlier in a scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) study. However, a major discrepancy with the STM results is the absence of any pronounced buckling within the surface unit cell. The ICISS results suggest that the vanadium layer on the surface is perfectly planar.