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Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. ; The fields of organic electronics and spintronics have the potential to revolutionize the electronics industry. Finding the right materials that can retain their electrical and spin properties when combined is a technological and fundamental challenge. We carry out the study of three archetypal organic molecules in intimate contact with the BiAg2 surface alloy. We show that the BiAg2 alloy is an especially suited substrate due to its inertness as support for molecular films, exhibiting an almost complete absence of substrate-molecular interactions. This is inferred from the persistence of a completely unaltered giant spin-orbit split surface state of the BiAg 2 substrate, and from the absence of significant metallic screening of charged molecular levels in the organic layer. Spin-orbit split states in BiAg2 turn out to be far more robust to organic overlayers than previously thought. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. ; This work is supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (MAT2010-21156-C03-01, PIB2010US-00652), by the Basque Government (IT-257-07), and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the SFB 616 'Energy Dissipation at Surfaces'. MCC additionally thanks the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes for support. MCC, JS, CAB and RM would like to thank the DFG for support within the program 'open access publizieren'. ; Peer Reviewed

Vicinal surfaces may undergo structural transformations as a function of temperature or in the presence of adsorbates. Step-doubling in which monatomic steps pair up forming double-atom high staircases is the simplest example. Here we investigate the case of Ni(111) using a curved crystal surface, which allows us to explore the occurrence of step-doubling as a function of temperature and vicinal plane (miscut α and step type). We find a striking A-type ({100}-like microfacets) versus B-type ({111}-like) asymmetry toward step-doubling. The terrace-width distribution analysis performed from scanning tunneling microscopy data points to elastic step interactions overcoming entropic effects at very small miscut α in A-type vicinals, as compared to B-type steps. For A-type vicinals, we elaborate the temperature/miscut phase diagram, on which we establish a critical miscut αc = 9.3° for step-doubling to take place. ; We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy (Grant MAT2013-46593-C6-4-P) and Basque Government (Grant IT621-13). ; Peer Reviewed

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.-- et al. ; Surface chemistry and catalysis studies could significantly gain from the systematic variation of surface active sites, tested under the very same conditions. Curved crystals are excellent platforms to perform such systematics, which may in turn allow to better resolve fundamental properties and reveal new phenomena. This is demonstrated here for the carbon monoxide/platinum system. We curve a platinum crystal around the high-symmetry (111) direction and carry out photoemission scans on top. This renders the spatial core-level imaging of carbon monoxide adsorbed on a 'tunable' vicinal surface, allowing a straightforward visualization of the rich chemisorption phenomenology at steps and terraces. Through such photoemission images we probe a characteristic elastic strain variation at stepped surfaces, and unveil subtle stress-release effects on clean and covered vicinal surfaces. These results offer the prospect of applying the curved surface approach to rationally investigate the chemical activity of surfaces under real pressure conditions. ; We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy (Grants MAT2013-46593-C6-4-P and MAT2013-46593-C6-2-P ), Basque Government (Grants IT621-13 and IT756-13). A.L.W. acknowledges support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-SC0012704. AXBR acknowledges support from the Basque Departamento de Educación and the UPV/EHU through the Zabalduz program. AXBR, PCS and DSP acknowledge the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the Sonderforschungsbereich 1083. ; Peer Reviewed