M. Pozzo1,2,3, P. Lacovig4, M. Bianchi4, M. Schied4a, L. Bignardi5, F. Zarotti6b, R. Felici7, D. Alfè3,8,9, S. Lizzit4, R. Larciprete6 1 Faculty of Technological & Innovation Sciences, Universitas Mercatorum, Rome, Italy 2 Institute for Materials Discovery, UCL East, Stratford, London, UK 3 Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, UK 4 Elettra - Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A., Trieste, Italy 5 Physics Department, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy 6 CNR- ISC, Rome, Italy 7 CNR-ISM, Rome, Italy 8 Physics Department, University Federico II, Napoli, Italy i 9 London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London, London, UK a present address: CNR-IOM, TASC Laboratory, Trieste, Italy b present address: ENEA, Frascati (RM), Italy. e-mail: monica.pozzo@unimercatorum.it; m.pozzo@ucl.ac.uk; rosanna.larciprete@isc.cnr.it Acknowledgments D.A. and R.L. acknowledge the Italian Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca for the support of the PRIN Project No. 20222FXZ33. F.Z., R.F. and R.L. acknowledge funding from Lazio Innova/Regione Lazio (Grant No. 85-201715316). MP acknowledges the funding from DOME 4.0 project from the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No. 953163 We acknowledge Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste for providing access to its synchrotron radiation facilities and for financial support. Original paper M Pozzo et al. Carbon 243, 120422 (2025); DOI:10.1016/j.carbon.2025.120422. Fig. 1 Figure 1. (a) C1s and (b) O1s core level spectra measured for Gr/Ni(111) surface exposed to 0.02 ML of water at RT; (c) integrated areas of the C1s components and (d) TPD curves as a function of the annealing temperature. (e-f) STM images of the clean Gr/Ni(111) surface before and after the exposure water: (e) Image of the Gr honeycomb lattice with a few nanostructures, likely Ni adatoms trapped at C vacancies; (f) images of the Gr layer evenly covered by H atoms also in the vicinity of a step edge after the exposure to 4.5 × 10−3 ML of water. (g) Calculated energy barriers for the three routes of the water dissociation on Gr/Ni(111) illustrated on the side, namely in the presence of an extra H atom preadsorbed on Gr, a C vacancy and a C vacancy site filled by a trapped Ni atom. Adapted from M Pozzo et al. Carbon 243, 120422 (2025); DOI:10.1016/j.carbon.2025.120422, under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. a b c d g e f Surfaces and Interfaces Elettra Highlights 2024–2025 131
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