Surface relaxation of Rh{001}

The relaxation of a clean Rh{001} surface is reexamined by means of analyses of three sets of low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) intensities collected in earlier experiments. The averaged results show that the first interlayer spacing is slightly contracted by (1.21.6 %) with respect to the bulk spacing (1.902) and that the second interlayer spacing is unrelaxed. These results are only a little different from those found by other authors in two previous LEED studies, and they lie in the range of the combined experimental errors of all the analyses. However, our results are in quite good agreement with a recent ab initio pseudopotential calculation of Morrison, Bylander, and Kleinman, who found ferromagnetism on the Rh{001} surface and a corresponding unusually small first-spacing relaxation. © 1993 The American Physical Society.