AVS 59th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition
    Surface Science Tuesday Sessions
       Session SS-TuP

Paper SS-TuP24
Modeling of Chemical Reaction – Induced Thermal Currents in Metal Nanofilm – Semiconductor Schottky Diodes

Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 6:00 pm, Room Central Hall

Session: Surface Science Poster Session
Presenter: E. Hasselbrink, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Authors: I. Nedrygailov, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
E. Karpov, University of Illinois at Chicago
E. Hasselbrink, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
D. Diesing, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Correspondent: Click to Email
Chemically induced currents (chemicurrents) in metal nanofilm – semiconductor contacts attracted considerable attention of the surface physics and chemistry community since McFarland, Nienhaus et al. reported a direct detection of hot electrons and holes, excited by a surface chemical reaction, using Schottky diodes under zero-bias voltage conditions. This phenomenon is highly promising for studying the dynamics of elementary chemical processes on the interface between the gas phase and a solid surface. The use of the chemicurrents for ultrafast chemical sensing and direct conversion of energy of surface chemical reactions into electricity is also currently discussed. As a matter of fact, the mechanism underlying the chemicurrent generation and detection is a subject of ongoing discussions due to the presence of unavoidable thermal effects, accompanying surface chemical reactions, which hamper an unambiguous identification of the experimental data. In this contribution we report on a simple theoretical model for estimating the

magnitude of the chemical reaction - induced thermal currents in metal nanofilm – semiconductor Schottky diodes. As well, we present a comparison of our calculations with the experimental values of the chemicurrents reported earlier.