Photoemission study of Pt adlayers on Ni(111)

The growth of Pt on Ni(111) was followed up to 1.7 monolayers by photoelectron spectroscopy. During the growth, the binding energy of the Pt 4f peaks remained almost constant and close to that of platinum bulk. This reveals that a high Pt-Ni interaction is attained at least in the submonolayer range. The direct consequence of this observation is that the Pt-Pt bond is weakened and that a distorted layer is formed. We show that this is consistent with results from other authors concerning Pt/Ni interfaces as well as Pt-Ni alloys.