Direct Methods in Surface Crystallography

Abstract

Direct methods have been studied for many years in the context of x-ray diffraction and it is the heavy atom technique of x-ray crystallography that inspires our approach to the surface problem. The idea is that we know the bulk structure lying behind the surface, and we can define a "reference surface" as near to the true surface structure as possible. It is subsequently treated as the "heavy atom" of the surface problem and all phases referred to the reference surface phases. The method is shown to work well for some simple examples. Future applications of greater sophistication are discussed.