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Notes: Irradiation of a Ru(001) surface covered with CO using intense femtosecond laser pulses (800 nm, 130 fs) leads to desorption of CO with a nonlinear dependence of the yield on the absorbed fluence (100–380 J/m2). Two-pulse correlation measurements reveal a response time of 20 ps (FWHM). The lack of an isotope effect together with the strong rise of the phonon temperature (2500 K) and the specific electronic structure of the adsorbate–substrate system strongly indicate that coupling to phonons is dominant. The experimental findings can be well reproduced within a friction-coupled heat bath model. Yet, pronounced dynamical cooling in desorption, found in the fluence-dependence of the translational energy, and in a non-Arrhenius behavior of the desorption probability reflect pronounced deviations from thermal equilibrium during desorption taking place on such a short time scale. © 2000 American Institute of Physics.

Notes: Traveling reaction fronts in the oxidation of hydrogen on a Pt(111) surface were investigated by means of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The fronts were observed during dosing of the oxygen covered surface with hydrogen at temperatures below 170 K. The fronts represented 10 to 100 nm wide OH-covered regions, separating unreacted O atoms from the reaction product H2O. O atoms were transformed into H2O by the motion of the OH zone. Small scale STM data showed the processes within the fronts on the atomic scale. Experiments on larger scale revealed the velocity and the width of the fronts as a function of temperature. A simple reaction–diffusion model has been constructed, which contains two reaction steps and the surface diffusion of water molecules, and qualitatively reproduces the experimental observations. A lower bound for the front velocity was also derived analytically. For a quantitative comparison between experiment and theory the rate constants of the two reaction steps and the diffusion coefficient of H2O were determined by STM and low energy electron diffraction experiments. With these parameters, the front velocities predicted by the model are approximately one order of magnitude smaller than those determined by STM. The predicted front widths are, depending on the temperature, between two and three orders of magnitude larger than the experimental values. We conclude that these deviations result from the inability of the reaction–diffusion system to describe the complex chemical processes and structure changes within the fronts. The atomically resolved STM data indicate attractive interactions between the particles that in particular affect the diffusion of the H2O molecules. © 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Notes: RuO2(110) surfaces were prepared by exposing Ru(0001) to 107 L of O2 at 700 K. Postexposure of O2 at 300 K resulted in an additional oxygen species (O-cus) adsorbed on coordinatively unsaturated Ru atoms (Ru-cus). The surface was then exposed to CO at 300 K and studied by thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS) and high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy (HREELS). It is demonstrated that CO is oxidized at 300 K through reaction with both the O-cus as well as with surface O-atoms held in bridge positions (O-bridge). Although—at room temperature—CO adsorbs intermediately on the Ru-cus atoms, it is stable only at the Ru atoms underneath the O-bridge after the latter has been reacted off. At room temperature only surface oxygen takes part in the CO oxidation and the oxygen-depleted surface can be restored by O2 exposure, so that under steady-state flow conditions an oxygen-deficient surface will exist whose stoichiometry will be determined by the ratio of partial pressures. © 2001 American Institute of Physics.

Notes: The dissociative chemisorption of nitrogen on clean and cesiated Ru(0001) surfaces has been studied using high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy (HREELS) and thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS). N2 (at 300 K) chemisorbs dissociatively with a sticking coefficient of 2×10−6, independent of substrate temperature which was varied between 420 and 700 K. The saturation coverage is found at 0.5 monolayer. The energy of the N–Ru stretching vibration is 71 meV at the bare surface and 69 meV at the cesiated Ru(0001) surface. The activation energy for desorption is about 190 kJ/mol for small coverages. The kinetic data suggest the existence of an activation barrier in the entrance channel of adsorption. Preadsorption of 0.08 monolayer of Cs increases the sticking coefficient only by a factor of 1.3, and the maximum amount of adsorbed N is reduced due to blocking of adsorption sites through Cs.

Notes: © 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Notes: The interaction of oxygen with Al(111) was studied by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Chemisorbed oxygen and surface oxides can be distinguished in STM images, where for moderate tunnel currents and independent of the bias voltage the former are imaged as depressions, while the latter appear as protrusions. An absolute coverage scale was established by counting O adatoms. The initial sticking coefficient is determined to so=0.005. Upon chemisorption at 300 K the O adlayer is characterized by randomly distributed, immobile, individual O adatoms and, for higher coverages, by small (1×1) O islands which consist of few adatoms only. From the random distribution of the thermalized O adatoms at low coverages a mobile atomic precursor species is concluded to exist, which results from an internal energy transfer during dissociative adsorption. These "hot adatoms'' "fly apart'' by at least 80 A(ring), before their excess energy is dissipated. A model is derived which explains the unusual island nucleation scheme by trapping of the hot adatoms at already thermalized oxygen atoms. Oxidation starts long before saturation of the (1×1) O adlayer, at coverages around aitch-thetaO(approximately-equal-to)0.2. For a wide coverage range bare and Oad covered surfaces coexist with the surface oxide phase. Upon further oxygen uptake both chemisorbed and oxide phase grow in coverage. Oxide nucleation takes place at the interface of Oad islands and bare surface, with a slight preference for nucleation at upper terrace step edges.Further oxide formation progresses by nucleation of additional oxide grains rather than by growth of existing ones, until the surface is filled up with a layer of small oxide particles of about 20 A(ring) in diameter. At very large exposures up to 5×105 L they cover the entire surface as a relatively smooth, amorphous layer of aluminum oxide. The difference in Al atom density between Al metal and surface oxide is accommodated by short range processes, with no indication for any long range Al mass transport. Based on our data we discuss a simpler two step model for the interaction of oxygen with Al(111), without making use of an additional subsurface oxygen species. The complex spectroscopic data for the O/Al(111) system are rationalized by the wide coexistence range of bare and Oad covered surface with surface oxide and by differences in the electronic and vibronic properties of the surface atoms depending on the number of neighboring O adatoms in the small Oad islands.

Notes: The parameters entering the kinetics for the mechanism of catalytic CO oxidation have been adapted for a Pt(110) surface, giving rise to a two-variable model correctly predicting bistability. Oscillations are obtained when, in addition, the adsorbate-driven 1×2–1×1 structural phase transition of Pt(110) is taken into account. Mixed-mode oscillations can be qualitatively explained by including the faceting of the surface as a fourth variable. The limitations of the model essentially stem from the fact that only ordinary differential equations have been analyzed so far neglecting spatial pattern formation. It is discussed which dynamic phenomena observed experimentally in the CO oxidation on Pt(110) will probably not be adequately describable without taking spatial effects into account.

Notes: Under isothermal conditions at low pressure (10−4 Torr), the catalytic oxidation of CO on a Pt(210) surface exhibits kinetic oscillations which have been investigated using Video-LEED, measurement of the CO2 production rate and the variation of work function. An induction period of ∼30 to 60 min, which has been shown to be due to a facetting of the surface exists before the appearance of kinetic oscillations. If reaction conditions are chosen which correspond to the high rate branch of Langmuir Hinshelwood kinetics, the Pt(210) surface facets into (310) and (110) orientations. The facetting process is associated with a decrease in catalytic activity caused by a lowering of the oxygen sticking coefficient. In situ LEED experiments demonstrated that the oscillations in the reaction rate are associated with periodic intensity variations of the half-order LEED beams belonging to (110) facets. Thus, the oscillations appear to be driven by the CO-induced 1×1(arrow-right-and-left)1×2 phase transition on (110) facets in the same way as has been verified for the system Pt(110)/CO+O2. The involvement of a facetting process explains the characteristic properties of kinetic oscillations on Pt(210) such as the relatively low high-temperature limit of ≈500 K, the existence of an induction period and the period length which is on the order of minutes.

Notes: The reaction of NO and CO on Pt(100) exhibits two branches of steady state production of N2 and CO2 and the occurrence of kinetic oscillations. This system was studied under steady flow conditions in the 10−6 mbar total pressure range using low-energy electron diffraction-(LEED), work function measurement, and mass spectrometry for determination of the reaction rate. These studies revealed that kinetic oscillations can only be initiated from one of the two stable reaction branches. Two separate existence regions were detected in which the oscillations are always damped. Oscillations can be very reproducibly excited by slight decreases in temperature. The 1×1(large-closed-square)hex phase transition of the surface structure was observed to take place only in one of the two regions of reaction rate oscillations. Its influence seems to be of minor relevance to the mechanism of oscillations as oscillations in one region occur on the surface that maintains a 1×1 structure. The experiments were modeled by a set of coupled differential equations based on knowledge about the elementary reaction steps. The model calculations reproduced the steady states of the reaction as well as the occurrence of kinetic oscillations in different ranges in excellent agreement with experimental observation. In the model, the phase transition also has no relevance for the oscillation mechanism. The occurrence of oscillations can be rationalized in terms of a periodic sequence of autocatalytic "surface explosions'' and the restoration of an adsorbate-covered surface. The damping, experimentally observed, is attributed to insufficient spatial coupling between different regions of the surface.

Notes: The ultraviolet-photochemistry of molecularly adsorbed oxygen on Pd(111) has been studied using pulsed laser light with 6.4 eV photon energy. Three processes occur upon irradiation: desorption of molecular oxygen, conversion between adsorption states, and dissociation to form adsorbed atomic oxygen. By using time-of-flight spectroscopy to detect the desorbing molecular oxygen and post-irradiation thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS) to characterize the adsorbate state, a detailed picture of the photochemical processes is obtained. The data indicate that the O2 molecules desorbing with low translational energies from the saturated surface as well as the conversion of adsorbed molecules between binding states are induced by the photoinduced build-up of atomic oxygen on the surface. Analysis of a proposed reaction model reproduces the observed data and yields detailed rates. Polarization analysis indicates that the photochemical processes are initiated by electronic excitations of the substrate.