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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: 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.

Notes: UV-laser irradiation (hν=6.4 eV and 5.0 eV) of the water bilayer adsorbed on a Pd(111) surface leads to molecular desorption and to conversion of the adsorbed state as manifested in thermal desorption spectra. The latter effect is attributed to photodissociation of water on the surface. Time-of-flight measurements show that water molecules desorb with a translational energy of about 600 K for both photon energies indicating a nonthermal process. While desorption is largely suppressed with adsorbed multilayers, conversion within the first layer still proceeds. The dependence of the desorption yield on angle of incidence and polarization of the light reveals substrate excitations as the dominant primary step. A strong variation of cross sections with isotopic substitution is observed. This is interpreted as evidence for the operation of a mechanism involving excitation onto an isotope-independent excited potential energy surface followed by rapid deexcitation to the ground state so that, of the total number of species excited, only a small mass dependent fraction actually fragments or desorbs.

Notes: The NO+CO reaction, which has been shown to exhibit damped kinetic oscillations on a Pt(100) surface after initial excitation, has been subjected to periodic and random forcing of the temperature and of the CO partial pressure. The experiments were conducted in the 10−7 mbar range and measurements of the CO2 production rate and of the work function were used to follow the response of the system. The response behavior is characterized by strong resonance effects and by the absence of quasiperiodic oscillations. The system is highly sensitive to temperature modulation, but rather insensitive to modulation of pCO with the latter requiring an amplitude of more than 5% of pCO for producing sustained oscillations. Random forcing experiments demonstrate that the response of the system can be described as a bandpass filter since only frequencies close to the natural frequency of the system are amplified. The results of the experiments led to the conclusion that the damping effect is due to the absence of an efficient synchronization mode under isothermal conditions at low pressures.

Notes: A two-variable Langmuir–Hinshelwood mechanism for isothermal CO oxidation on a catalytically active surface is presented. It shows bistability stemming from 2 cusp bifurcations, which can be obtained analytically for low pressure. Inclusion of CO diffusion on the surface leads to a system of partial differential equations, which exhibits nucleation and front propagation phenomena in the bistable region. While the line of equistability could with good accuracy be solved for analytically, the front velocities and critical radii for nucleation had to be determined numerically (using the method of heteroclinic orbits). Throughout the calculations the kinetics and rate constants for the CO oxidation on Pt(111) are used. Here the model can be reduced by adiabatic elimination of one variable (namely oxygen coverage) allowing a comparison to the exactly solved one-variable Schlögl model. Possible implications for future experimental work are briefly discussed.

Notes: During oxidation of thin Cs films, a nonadiabatic surface reaction manifests itself in the emission of electrons. This effect was investigated in detail by combining measurements of the current and of energy distributions of these exoelectrons with studies on the electronic properties of the surface by means of ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy and metastable deexcitation spectroscopy. Exoelectron emission occurs via Auger deexcitation of the empty state derived from the O2 affinity level. This process is confined to the stage Cs2O2→CsO2 in which resonance ionization of the affinity level of the impinging O2 molecule upon crossing the Fermi level EF is efficiently suppressed due to the absence of metallic states near EF. A kinetic model based on the successive steps involved in the oxidation of Cs is developed which describes qualitatively well all the experimental findings.