The Chemisorption of Hydrocarbons An Overview

The purpose of this section is to try to construct a map to guide us through the jungle that is the literature on the chemisorption of hydrocarbons, to evolve -if indeed it is possible - some general principles, to delineate the main features, and to outline the strategy to be adopted in later sections. 

Other than hydrogen as has long been known,ethane may be a product of the chemisorption of ethene, but such reactions are not catalytic, because a dehydrogenated species is left behind blocking the surface. Reactions of a chemisorbed hydrocarbon by and with itself are for this reason treated in this chapter (Section 4.6). 

The next section will deal briefly with experimental techniques many of these have been introduced already, but the use of vibrational spectroscopy and of sum-frequency generation call for some further description. Section 4.4.1 describes the principal types of adsorbed hydrocarbon structure that have been found with alkenes and alkynes (aromatic hydrocarbons and cyclic Ce species will be considered in Chapters 10 and 12 respectively) Section 4.4.2 discusses the conditions under which the several chemisorbed forms of alkenes make their appearance. In Section 4.5 we look at detailed structural studies of a few adsorbed molecules, and Section 4.6 deals somewhat briefly with interconversions and decompositions of adsorbed alkenes, and structures of species formed. Finally there are sections on theoretical approaches (4.7), on the chemisorption of alkanes (4.8), and carbonaceous deposits that are the ultimate product of the decomposition process (4.9). 

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