Initial Oxidation of TiAl: an Ab-initio Investigation.

We present ab-initio investigation of oxygen adsorption up to two monolayer coverage on the stoichiometric TiAl(100) surface to illustrate the initial oxidation stage. The formation of band gap near the Fermi level demonstrates the transformation from metal to oxide surface with increasing oxygen coverage. The oxidation of Ti rather than Al is observed from our electronic structure calculations. The energy barriers of oxygen diffusion between different sites on surface as well as in subsurface and bulk region are derived. It is shown that the diffusion of oxygen is much easier on the surface than that into the subsurface region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]