Adsorption adatom

Fig. XVII-18. Contours of constant adsorption energy for a krypton atom over the basal plane of graphite. The carbon atoms are at the centers of the dotted triangular regions. The rhombuses show the unit cells for the graphite lattice and for the commensurate adatom lattice. (From Ref. 8. Reprinted with permission from American Chemical Society, copyright 1993.)...

Adsorbed atoms and molecules can also diflfiise across terraces from one adsorption site to another [33]. On a perfect terrace, adatom diflfiision could be considered as a random walk between adsorption sites, with a diflfiisivity that depends on the barrier height between neighbouring sites and the surface temperature [29]. The diflfiision of adsorbates has been studied with FIM [14], STM [34, 35] and laser-mduced themial desorption [36]. 

The second class of atomic manipulations, the perpendicular processes, involves transfer of an adsorbate atom or molecule from the STM tip to the surface or vice versa. The tip is moved toward the surface until the adsorption potential wells on the tip and the surface coalesce, with the result that the adsorbate, which was previously bound either to the tip or the surface, may now be considered to be bound to both. For successful transfer, one of the adsorbate bonds (either with the tip or with the surface, depending on the desired direction of transfer) must be broken. The fate of the adsorbate depends on the nature of its interaction with the tip and the surface, and the materials of the tip and surface. Directional adatom transfer is possible with the apphcation of suitable junction biases. Also, thermally-activated field evaporation of positive or negative ions over the Schottky barrier formed by lowering the potential energy outside a conductor (either the surface or the tip) by the apphcation of an electric field is possible. FIectromigration, the migration of minority elements (ie, impurities, defects) through the bulk soHd under the influence of current flow, is another process by which an atom may be moved between the surface and the tip of an STM. 

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. 

Regardless of the exact extent (shorter or longer range) of the interaction of each alkali adatom on a metal surface, there is one important feature of Fig 2.6 which has not attracted attention in the past. This feature is depicted in Fig. 2.6c, obtained by crossploting the data in ref. 26 which shows that the activation energy of desorption, Ed, of the alkali atoms decreases linearly with decreasing work function . For non-activated adsorption this implies a linear decrease in the heat of chemisorption of the alkali atoms AHad (=Ed) with decreasing > ... 

Electronegative adatoms cause significant changes in the metal surface electronic stmcture, manifest as changes in the surface work function. In general electronegative additives increase the work function of the metal substrate. Typical examples are shown in Figures 2.9 and 2.10 for the adsorption of Cl and coadsorption of Cl and O on the work function of... 

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.

Adsorption of Gases on Surfaces Modified by Electronegative Adatoms... 

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. 

Despite the poisoning action of Cl for oxygen dissociative adsorption on Ag, it is used as moderator in the ethylene epoxidation reaction in order to attain high selectivity to ethylene oxide. The presence of Cl adatoms in this... 

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. 

The influence of the presence of sulfur adatoms on the adsorption and decomposition of methanol and other alcohols on metal surfaces is in general twofold. It involves reduction of the adsorption rate and the adsorptive capacity of the surface as well as significant modification of the decomposition reaction path. For example, on Ni(100) methanol is adsorbed dissociatively at temperatures as low as -100K and decomposes to CO and hydrogen at temperatures higher than 300 K. As shown in Fig. 2.38 preadsorption of sulfur on Ni(100) inhibits the complete decomposition of adsorbed methanol and favors the production of HCHO in a narrow range of sulfur coverage (between 0.2 and 0.5). 

This is illustrated in Figure 1.6 for the dissociation of CO [3]. As a consequence of the high value of a, the proportionality constant of recombination is usually approximately 0.2, reflecting a weakening of the adatom surface bonds in transition state by this small amount. It implies that typically one of the six surface bonds is broken in the transition state compared to the adsorption state of the two atoms before recombination. 

From chemisorption theory we know that adatom adsorption energies wiU decrease in a row of the periodic system of the group VIII metals when the position of the element moves to the right. The rate of hydrogenation of Cads vviU decrease with increasing adsorption energy of Cads and hence wiU decrease in the same order with element position in the periodic system. 

A map of the electron density distribution around these atoms provides important information. It tells us to what distance from the adatom the surface is perturbed or, in catalytic terms, how many adsorption sites are promoted or poisoned by the adatom. The charge density contours in Fig. 6.27 are lines of constant electron density. 

The methods for depositing chlorine adatoms on the (110) surface have been described previously (26), and resulted in surface structures and LEED patterns identical to those achieved by dissociative CI2 adsorption. A c(4x2)-Cl pattern at 6 , = 0.75 (26) was used to calibrate chlorine coverages, which were taken proportional to the ratio of Cl Ag AES intensities (26). 

Dynamics of Crystal Growth hi the preceding section we illustrated the use of a lattice Monte Carlo method related to the study of equilibrium properties. The KMC and DMC method discussed above was applied to the study of dynamic electrochemical nucleation and growth phenomena, where two types of processes were considered adsorption of an adatom on the surface and its diffusion in different environments. 

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