Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 17: Poster Session

MM 17.32: Poster

Monday, March 26, 2012, 17:00–19:00, Poster B

Structural aspects of hydride formation in Gd thin films — •Sara Wanjelik, Volkmar Hess, and Mathias Getzlaff — Institute of Applied Physics, University of Düsseldorf

Hydrogen in metals has attracted a lot of attention in the past decades. On the one hand this is caused by the technical application as hydrogen storage. On the other hand metal hydrogen systems are of great interest from a fundamentel point of view.

For our research we use Gadolinium grown on a W(110) crystal. Depending on the preparation conditions smooth films or islands can be obtained. The investigations were performed with a scanning tunneling microscope. It can also be used in the spectroscopic mode. This allows us to correlate hydrogen-induced electronic and topographic changes on the atomic scale. Offering high amounts of hydrogen to Gd thin films results in the formation of hydrides which exhibit a significantly enhanced lattice volume. Thus, structural changes occur in order to reduce the stress. As a result the surface shows different types of morphological variations. These changes are studied as a function of film thickness.