Adatom effects

Several adatoms effects were observed, with various reactions. This effect can usually be depicted as poisoning of undesirable sites, resulting simultaneously in a decrease of the global catalytic activity and in a significant increase of the selectivities for the desired products. We describe here three examples, the hydrogenation of a, -unsaturated aldehydes (the same reaction as above but now in the presence of a very small amount of tin), the isomerization of 3-carene into 2-carene, and the dehydrogenation of butan-2-ol into methyl ethyl ketone. 

Bonig L, Liu S and Metiu FI 1996 An effective medium theory study of Au islands on the Au(IOO) surface reconstruction, adatom diffusion, and island formation Surf. Sot 365 87... 

Current use of statistical thermodynamics implies that the adsorption system can be effectively separated into the gas phase and the adsorbed phase, which means that the partition function of motions normal to the surface can be represented with sufficient accuracy by that of oscillators confined to the surface. This becomes less valid, the shorter is the mean adsorption time of adatoms, i.e. the higher is the desorption temperature. Thus, near the end of the desorption experiment, especially with high heating rates, another treatment of equilibria should be used, dealing with the whole system as a single phase, the adsorbent being a boundary. This is the approach of the gas-surface virial expansion of adsorption isotherms (51, 53) or of some more general treatment of this kind. 

Figure 2.6. Effect of alkali coverage on (a) the alkali adatom dipole moment and alkali desorption energy (b) for Na, K and Cs adsorbed on Ru (0001) and corresponding effect of work function change AO on the alkali desorption energy (c).26 Reprinted with permission from Elsevier Science.

On the basis of the dipole moment, Paik, values computed from the Helmholtz equation (2.21) and the alkali ion radius one can estimate the effective positive charge, q, on the alkali adatom, provided its coordination on the surface is known. Such calculations give q values between 0.4 and 0.9 e (e.g. 0.86e for K on Pt(lll) at low coverages) which indicate that even at very low coverages the alkali adatoms are not fully ionized.6 This is confirmed by rigorous quantum mechanical calculations.27,28... 

Figure 2.25. C2H4 (a), H2 (b) and C2H6 (c) TPD spectra recorded after ethylene adsorption on clean and K-covered Pt(l 11). Ta = 100 K. 0K values are relative to the saturation K coverage in the first layer taken as unity. Inset effect of 0k on C2H6 TPD area. The real coverage in monolayers (K adatoms per surface atom) is 3.03 times smaller.74 Reprinted with permission from Elsevier Science.

The effect induced by different electronegative additives is more pronounced in the case where the additive adatoms occupy the most coordinated sites forming ordered structures (e.g Cl addition onNi(lOO)). In this case (Fig. 2.28) one modifier adatom affects 3-4 CO adsorption sites and complete disappearance of the CO p2-peak is observed above modifier coverages of -0.25 or less. The lack of ordering and the tendency of the modifier to form amorphous islands (e.g. P on Ni(100)) diminishes the effect. Thus in the case of P on Ni(100) the disappearance of the CO p2-peak is observed at P coverages exceeding 0.6. 

The effect of electronegative additives on the adsorption of ethylene on transition metal surfaces is similar to the effect of S or C adatoms on the adsorption of other unsaturated hydrocarbons.6 For example the addition of C or S atoms on Mo(100) inhibits the complete decomposition (dehydrogenation) of butadiene and butene, which are almost completely decomposed on the clean surface.108 Steric hindrance plays the main role in certain cases, i.e the addition of the electronegative adatoms results in blocking of the sites available for hydrocarbon adsorption. The same effect has been observed for saturated hydrocarbons.108,109 Overall, however, and at least for low coverages where geometric hindrance plays a limited role, electronegative promoters stabilize the adsorption of ethylene and other unsaturated and saturated hydrocarbons on metal surfaces. 

A plot of the adatom density versus T is shown in Fig. 4. An anomalous increase in the density is observed at high temperatures. The dashed line represents the adatom population that would be predicted if there were no lateral interactions. However, the LJ potential between adatoms tends to stabilize them at the higher coverages, and it is this effect that causes the deviation from Arrhenius behavior at high temperatures. A similar temperature dependence is observed in the rate of mass transport on some metal surfaces (8,9), and it is possible that it is caused by the enhanced population of the superlayer at high temperatures. 

We have studied the steady-state kinetics and selectivity of this reaction on clean, well-characterized sinxle-crystal surfaces of silver by usinx a special apparatus which allows rapid ( 20 s) transfer between a hixh-pressure catalytic microreactor and an ultra-hixh vacuum surface analysis (AES, XPS, LEED, TDS) chamber. The results of some of our recent studies of this reaction will be reviewed. These sinxle-crystal studies have provided considerable new insixht into the reaction pathway throuxh molecularly adsorbed O2 and C2H4, the structural sensitivity of real silver catalysts, and the role of chlorine adatoms in pro-motinx catalyst selectivity via an ensemble effect. 

We have measured data similar to Fig. 2 where, instead, the effects of O2 pressure upon the steady-state rates and 6 were observed ( ). These data are plotted in Fig. 3 to directJy reflect the effects of oxygen adatom coverage upon the rates at a fixed... 

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