A photoelectron diffraction study of the surface-V2O3 (2×2) layer on Pd(111)

X-ray photoelectron diffraction (XPD) has been applied to the study of the surface-(s)-V2O3 (2×2) layer on Pd(111), which is a novel interface-stabilised vanadium oxide phase with no bulk oxide counterpart. It has been detected by scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) during the growth of ultrathin films of vanadium oxide on Pd(111). XPD confirms the general features of the model for s-V2O3/Pd(111), which has been proposed previously on the basis of STM measurements and ab initio density-functional-theory (DFT) calculations. In addition, quantitative agreement is found between the DFT model and the XPD experiment in the estimate of the average V–O interlayer spacing: the experimental result is 0.72±0.07 Å, while the DFT-derived value is 0.723 Å.