Andrew Cassidy: Hydrogenating graphene on Pt(111); the C-Pt bond

Andrew Cassidy, Martha Scheffler, Anders Vertergaard, John Thrower, Claus Frederik Plesner Kastorp, Liv Hornekær  Institute for Physics and Astronomy, and Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center, Aarhus University  Graphene on Pt(111) has been reported as a test system for “catalysis under cover”.1 The concept of catalysis under cover seeks to exploit the benefits of graphene as a corrosion preventing barrier to improve the performance of the underlying metal as a catalyst. The promise is based on the intercalation of the reacting species, e.g., CO, at the graphene-metal interface. We have previously demonstrated that CO intercalation can be switched on and off by using H atoms to functionalise graphene on Ir(111)2 and here we seek to expand these ideas to the more catalytically active Gr-Pt(111) system. In addition, hydrogenation of Gr-Pt(111) has recently been used for cutting edge scattering measurements to understand H atom sticking at carbon surfaces.3 A full understanding of the reactive sites  between H and Gr-Pt(111) would help us to better understand those results. We report UHV experiments, using STM and XPS to fully charactise graphene on Pt(111) and the reaction with H atoms. We demonstrate the subsequent formation of a C-Pt bond and discuss the sites of the Gr-Pt(111) moiré lattice at which this might occur.  1. Yao et al., PNAS, 2014 111 (48) 17023-17028 2. Kyhl et al., ACS Appl. Nano Mater, 2018 1 (9) 4509-4515 3. Jiang et al. Science, 2019 364 (6438) 379-382 Andrew Cassidy is a post doc at the Institute for Physics and Astronomy at Aarhus University. He is primarily interested in the chemical interactions between a surface and its environment, and in particular the chemistry of graphene on various substrates. He received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from University College Dublin (2006) and a Ph.D. in Chemistry (2010) from the University of Cambridge where he studied the interfacial chemistry of organic crystal surfaces. Since finishing his Ph.D, he has been a postdoctoral researcher in Aarhus, working with Prof. Liv Hornekær and Prof. David Field.