Study on Oxidation of Cu and Cu3Au Surfaces with Hyperthermal Oxygen Molecular Beam

Abstract

Corrosion wastes more than a few percent of the world's GDP every year. The initial stage of the corrosion is one of the central topics in material science. The oxidation is one of the major corrosion processes of metals. Thus, the study of the oxidation process on metal surfaces is generally interesting in various fields of science and technology. The growth of a protective thin surface layer, which prevents further oxidation into bulk of a metal, requires the formation of a homogeneous film. One simple way for the protection of underlying metals is surface alloying, combining different substances to form multi-component surfaces. The surface alloying leads to the formation of a protective oxide layer due to the preferential oxidation of one component, possibly with surface segregation. Copper and copper alloys have wide industrial applications, and therefore are of interest for studies of oxidation mechanism, especially in the Cu2O formation. Cu forms the stable Cu2O, while Au does not form a stable oxide and is not soluble into stable Cu2O. Thus, the Cu-Au alloy system is ideal for investigating the effect of alloying on the formation of protective layer against further oxidation into bulk. Here, we introduce our recent comparative studies of the oxidation of Cu(100) and Cu3Au(100) with hyperthermal O2 molecular beam and discuss why Cu3Au(100) is protective against the oxidation.