CO dissociation on rhomboidal faceted nanopyramids, produced on Rh(110) by fine-tuning of ion irradiation conditions, has been studied by high resolution core-level spectroscopy. We find that this morphology presents a large efficiency towards CO dissociation, a process which is inhibited on flat (110) terraces. We also measured the reactivity of nanostructures bound by different artificial step distributions identifying the sites responsible for the molecular bond disruption in the undercoordinated ($n=6$) edges running along the $[1\overline{1}2]$ equivalent directions, with CO sitting in on-top configuration.

• Received 7 March 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.056103