Effect of defects on reaction of NiO surface with Pb-contained solution

In order to understand the role of defects in chemical reactions, we used two types of samples, which are molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) grown NiO(001) film on Mg(001) substrate as the defect free NiO prototype and NiO grown on Ni(110) single crystal as the one with defects. In-situ observations for oxide-liquid interfacial structure and surface morphology were performed for both samples in water and Pb-contained solution using high-resolution X-ray reflectivity and atomic force microscopy. For the MBE grown NiO, no significant changes were detected in the high-resolution X-ray reflectivity data with monotonic increase in roughness. Meanwhile, in the case of native grown NiO on Ni(110), significant changes in both the morphology and atomistic structure at the interface were observed when immersed in water and Pb-contained solution. Our results provide simple and direct experimental evidence of the role of the defects in chemical reaction of oxide surfaces with both water and Pb-contained solution.