Wood's notation

Wood's notation takes the form

${\displaystyle {\text{M}}(hk\ell )-\left({\tfrac {|{\textbf {a}}_{0}|}{|{\textbf {a}}_{s}|}}\times {\tfrac {|{\textbf {b}}_{0}|}{|{\textbf {b}}_{s}|}}\right)-{\text{R}}\alpha ^{\circ }-{\text{A}}}$

where M is the chemical symbol of the substrate, A is the chemical symbol of the overlayer, ${\displaystyle (hk\ell )}$ are the Miller indices of the surface plane, R and ${\displaystyle \alpha }$ correspond to the rotational difference between the substrate and overlayer vectors, and the vector magnitudes shown are those of the substrate (${\displaystyle s}$ subscripts) and of the overlayer (${\displaystyle 0}$ subscripts). This notation can only describe commensurate overlayers however, while matrix notation can describe both.

Matrix notation

Matrix notation differs from Wood's notation in the second term, which is replaced by the ${\displaystyle G}$ matrix that describes the overlayer primitive vectors in terms of the substrate primitive vectors:

${\displaystyle {\begin{pmatrix}{\textbf {a}}_{0}\\{\textbf {b}}_{0}\end{pmatrix}}=G{\begin{pmatrix}{\textbf {a}}_{s}\\{\textbf {b}}_{s}\end{pmatrix}}}$, where ${\displaystyle G={\begin{pmatrix}G_{11}&G_{12}\\G_{21}&G_{22}\\\end{pmatrix}}}$

and so hence matrix notation has the form

${\displaystyle {\text{M}}(hk\ell )-G-{\text{R}}\alpha ^{\circ }-{\text{A}}}$

Textbooks

• Kolasinski, Kurt W. (2012). Surface Science: Foundations of Catalysis and Nanoscience (3 ed.). Wiley. ISBN 978-1119990352.
• Attard, Gary; Barnes, Colin (1998). Surfaces. Oxford Chemistry Primers. ISBN 978-0198556862.

Websites

• "6.1: Classification of Overlayer Structures". chem.libretexts.org. 11 February 2015. Retrieved 2019-03-12.