HREELS technique

In the following discussion, heavy emphasis is made of examples from studies of adsorbed layers on metal single-crystal samples. These illustrate the power of the HREELS technique and represent the main use of HREELS historically. Certainly HREELS has been used outside of the single-crystal world, and mention is made concerning its use on practical materials. This latter use of HREELS represents a true frontier. 

The HREEL technique can be used in several ways for detailed spectroscopic studies of vibrational and electronic excitation within the atomic and molecular films... 

The optimum binding energies for each of the five positions described above are shown in Table II. It is clear that the formation of C-O-AI complex (position 5, a = 0°) is favored. The AI-0 distance is found to be 1.80 A. (We should stress here that the C-0 distance is not reoptimized after bonding to Al.) In Table 2, we also show the vibrational frequency calculated, using the harmonic oscillator approximation, for the AI-0 streching in position 5. Its value is 890 cm 1. Pireaux et al (15), using HREELS techniques to study the AI/PI interaction, found that the vibration at 1720 cm 1 associated with C = 0... 

Detailed studies of the coadsorption of oxygen and carbon monoxide, hysteresis phenomena, and oscillatory reaction of CO oxidation on Pt(l 0 0) and Pd(l 1 0) single crystals, Pt- and Pd-tip surfaces have been carried out with the MB, FEM, TPR, XPS, and HREELS techniques. It has been found that the Pt(l 0 0) nanoplane under self-osciUation conditions passes reversibly from a catalytically inactive state (hex) into ahighly active state (1 x 1). The occurrence of kinetic oscillations over Pd nanosurfaces is associated with periodic formation and depletion of subsurface oxygen (Osub)- Transient kinetic experiments show that CO does not react chemically with subsurface oxygen to form CO2 below 300 K. It has been found that CO reacts with an atomic Oads/Osub state beginning at temperature 150 K. Analysis of Pd- and Pt-tip surfaces with a local resolution of 20 A shows the availability of a sharp boundary between the mobile COads and Oads fronts. The study of CO oxidation on Pt(l 0 0) and Pd(l 1 0) nanosurfaces by FEM has shown that the surface phase transition and oxygen penetration into the subsurface can lead to critical phenomena such as hysteresis, self-oscillations, and chemical waves. 

Analysis of Surface Molecular Composition. Information about the molecular composition of the surface or interface may also be of interest. A variety of methods for elucidating the nature of the molecules that exist on a surface or within an interface exist. Techniques based on vibrational spectroscopy of molecules are the most common and include the electron-based method of high resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy (hreels), and the optical methods of ftir and Raman spectroscopy. These tools are tremendously powerful methods of analysis because not only does a molecule possess vibrational modes which are signatures of that molecule, but the energies of molecular vibrations are extremely sensitive to the chemical environment in which a molecule is found. Thus, these methods direcdy provide information about the chemistry of the surface or interface through the vibrations of molecules contained on the surface or within the interface. 

In this chapter, three methods for measuring the frequencies of the vibrations of chemical bonds between atoms in solids are discussed. Two of them, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, FTIR, and Raman Spectroscopy, use infrared (IR) radiation as the probe. The third, High-Resolution Electron Enetgy-Loss Spectroscopy, HREELS, uses electron impact. The fourth technique. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, NMR, is physically unrelated to the other three, involving transitions between different spin states of the atomic nucleus instead of bond vibrational states, but is included here because it provides somewhat similar information on the local bonding arrangement around an atom. 

Fig. 7. Optical density of solid Coo on Suprasil based on two different optical techniques (+, ). For comparison, the solution spectrum for Coo dissolved in decalin (small dots) is shown. The inset is a plot of the electron loss function -7m[(l + e)] vs E shown for comparison (HREELS) [78].

Another spectroscopic technique, high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy (HREELS), has been used by Wagner and Moylan211 in combination with cyclic voltammetry to estimate ffs0of a Pt(lll) electrode from the reaction of H30+ formation. 

HREELS and TFD have played a unique role In characterizing the surface chemistry of systems which contain hydrogen since many surface techniques are not sensitive to hydrogen. We have used these techniques to characterize H2S adsorption and decomposition on the clean and (2x2)-S covered Ft(111) surface (5). Complete dissociation of H,S was observed on the clean Ft(lll) surface even at IlOK to yield a mixed overlayer of H, S, SH and H2S. Decomposition Is primarily limited by the availability of hydrogen adsorption sites on the surface. However on the (2x2)-S modified Ft(lll) surface no complete dissociation occurs at IlOK, Instead a monolayer of adsorbed SH Intermediate Is formed (5) ... 

Vibrational spectroscopy provides the most definitive means of identifying the surface species arising from molecular adsorption and the species generated by surface reaction, and the two techniques that are routinely used for vibrational studies of molecules on surfaces are Infrared (IR) Spectroscopy and Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (HREELS) (q.v.). 

The other technique is HREELS (high resolution EELS) which utilises the inelastic scattering of low energy electrons in order to measure vibrational spectra of surface species. The use of low energy electrons ensures that it is a surface specific technique, and is often chosen for the study of most adsorbates on single crystal substrates. 

We end the section on EELS with an example from a state-of-the-art instrument enabling routine measurement of spectra with a resolution of about 2 meV to be made. In such cases it is customary to refer to the technique as high resolution EELS or HREELS. 

Electron-Induced Reactions—HREELS Measurements. Novel LEE-induced chemistry has also been observed in HREEL measurements of molecular solids and molecules physisorbed on the surface of RGS. For example, Lepage et ah, building on the initial observations of Jay-Gerin et al. [141], have employed HREELS to measure in situ, neutral dissociation products arising from the impact of low-energy electrons on thin multilayer films of methanol [37] and acetone [38]. The technique is similar to that developed earlier by Martel et al. [258] for chemisorbed systems, in that the same electron beam is used for both the production and the detection of the neutral fragments. However, in the work of Lepage... 

The same experimental techniques were applied to measure effective cross sections for the electron-induced production of CO from condensed acetone [38], which again was attributed to the formation of TNI and their decay to neutral dissociative states. HREELS measurements have also been used to study electron-induced degradation of cyclopropane [260] and CFI3CI on graphite [261]. 

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