SSR

SSR - Surface Structure and Reactivity Group

research
  projects and collaborations

Highlights

On the cover of JACS!

A research carried out by the Surface Structure and Reactivity group appears on the cover of the the issue of Journal of the American Chemical Society, published on March 11, 2009.
In collaboration with the research group coordinated by Prof. Georg Kresse at the University of Vienna, we investigated the influence of the lattice expansion on the reactivity of a model catalyst. High resolution STM movies have been acquired during the water formation reaction on a 1D oxide on Rh(110), evidencing a peculiar 'comblike' pathway for the reaction front that propagates on the surface. With the help of detailed DFT calculations, it is demonstrated that the specific geometrical configuration at the atomic level, which is determined by the lattice expansion and its relaxation as the reaction proceeds, governs the process. Furthermore, at low temperature a regular low-coverage pattern of residual oxygen atoms adsorbed on metal segments arises at the end of the reaction, which results in an array of specific active sites that might be used, for example, for partial oxidation reactions of large organic molecules.

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