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To validate the crystal structure and elucidate the formation mechanism of the unexpected surface copper boride, a systematic scanning tunneling microscope, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, and aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy investigations were conducted to confirm the structure of copper-rich boride Cu8B14 after depositing boron on single-crystal Cu(111) surface under ultrahigh vacuum. First-principles calculations with defective surface models further indicate that boron atoms tend to react with Cu atoms near terrace edges or defects, which in turn shapes the intermediate structures of copper boride and leads to the formation of stable Cu-B monolayer via large-scale surface reconstruction eventually.

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 17 December 2022
Revised: 31 December 2022
Accepted: 08 January 2023
Published: 27 February 2023
Issue date: July 2023

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2023

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11874224 and 52025026), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFA0305900), and the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province of China (No. E2022203109). The authors are grateful for the technical support from Nano-X from Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SINANO).

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