AVS 50th International Symposium
    Surface Science Tuesday Sessions
       Session SS1-TuM

Paper SS1-TuM9
Coupled Experimental and Theoretical Study of Weakly Adsorbed Molecules on Metal Surfaces

Tuesday, November 4, 2003, 11:00 am, Room 327

Session: Catalysis II: Hydrocarbons at Metal Surfaces
Presenter: H. Ogasawara, Stockholm University, Sweden
Authors: H. Ogasawara, Stockholm University, Sweden
H. Ostrom, Stockholm University, Sweden
B. Brena, Stockholm University, Sweden
D. Nordlund, Uppsala University, Sweden
M. Nyberg, Stockholm University, Sweden
L. Petersson, Stockholm University, Sweden
A. Nilsson, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Correspondent: Click to Email
The heat of adsorption is often treated as an indicator of the strength of adsorbate-substrate interaction. We present the combined experimental and theoretical study of weakly adsorbed systems on metal surfaces. We studied the electronic structure of water and hydrocarbons which are often considered as weakly bound species. We observed significant electron sharing between the adsorbate and metal surface and involvement of both bonding and antibonding molecular orbitals in the molecule-metal bond. These findings are a key to understand the O-H or C-H bond activation mechanism. We also present computational details how we computed the adsorption structure of these systems.