Quantum state-resolved studies of direct and precursor-mediated dissociative chemisorption of silane on Si(100)

In this work, I present the results of my studies on the state-resolved reactivity of silane (SiH4) on the Si(100)-(2x1) surface. The results demonstrate a co-existence of both a direct and a precursor mediated mechanisms for the dissociative chemisorptions of SiH4 on Si(100)-(2x1). Above an incident kinetic energy of 34 kJ/mol, where SiH4 chemisorption occurs via the direct mechanism, I find that both translation and vibrational energy activate the chemisorptions. Vibrational energy is slightly less effective than translation energy in promoting the reaction since adding 51.6 kJ/mol of vibrational energy leads to the same reactivity increases as adding 47 kJ/mol of translational energy. Vibrational excitation leads to at most a factor of 4 increase in reactivity of SiH4 on Si(100)-(2x1). While translational activation was reported before [Jones et. al, Chem. Phys. Lett., 1994, 229, 401], this is the first time vibrational activation is observed for SiH4 chemisorption on Si(100)-(2x1). I also investigate mode-specific reactivity by comparing the reactivity of SiH4 excited to two different nearly isoenergetic vibrational states, |2000> and |1100>. The results show that the reactivity of SiH4 excited to the |2000> state is consistently higher than that of the |1100> state over the range of incident kinetic energy studied. This mode-specific reactivity of SiH4 on Si(100)-(2x1) is rationalized in terms of different vibrational amplitude of the |2000> and the |1100> states: the former contains two quanta of Si-H stretch in a single Si-H bond, whereas the latter contains one quantum of Si-H stretch in each of two Si-H bonds. Below 34 kJ/mol, where SiH4 chemisorption on Si(100)x(2x1) occurs via the precursor-mediated mechanism, the effect of internal vibrational energy on the reactivity is found for the first time. While increasing translational energy decreases SiH4 reactivity, vibrational energy increases its reactivity. After the incident SiH4 molecule is trapped in the weakly bound precursor state, its vibrational energy appears to be conserved long enough that it can still promotes the chemisorption reaction once the trapped SiH4 encounters a reactive site. The chemisorption of SiH4 is, however, also weakly activated with vibrational energy in the precursor-mediated mechanism, in which a reactivity enhancement of less than a factor of 2 is observed for vibrationally excited SiH4. The use of isotopic selective excitation in deposition experiments to control the isotopic abundance of Si is not successful due to the fact that SiH4 chemisorption on Si(100)-(2x1) is weakly activated with vibrational energy. With a reactivity enhancement of at most a factor of 4, the relative isotope abundance of 28Si is expected to increase by only 0.6% in the laser excitation experiment. Such a small change in the natural isotopic abundance could not be detected reliably in the limited analysis time by our SIMS setup. However, this experiment can be applied to other system, where vibration excitation is more efficient to promote the reaction. Furthermore, vibrational activation of precursor-mediated gas-surface reaction discovered in this work will open up a new possibility to control gas-surface reaction of physisorbed species on surfaces.

Bond-selective and surface-site-specific dissociation of methane on platinum

Ana Gutiérrez González

I present a molecular beam study of methane dissociation on differ-ent surface sites of several platinum single crystal surfaces (Pt(111), Pt(211), Pt(210), Pt(110)-(2x1)). The experiments were performed in a molecular beam/surface-science apparatus that combines rovibrational state-selective excitation of reactants with detection of the reaction products by reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy (RAIRS), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and King and Wells (K&W) technique. First, I explore how the barrier for methane dissociation depends on the Pt surface site (terrace, step, kink, and ridge atoms). For that, I compare the average reaction probabilities of methane on the different crystals using K&W. Moreover, I used the site-specific detection of chemisorbed methyl species by RAIRS to obtain the site-specific reactivity on steps, ridges and terraces. The highest methane reactivity and therefore the lowest barrier was observed for the surface atoms with the lowest coordination. The trans-lational energy dependence of the reactivity shows clear evidence for a direct activated mechanism on all the surface sites studied. The decreasing catalyt-ic activity for Pt atoms with increasing coordination number agrees well with theoretical predictions using first principles quantum theory calculations. Second, I present the role of rovibrational excitation of the incident methane on the chemisorption on different surface sites. For CH4, excitation of one quantum of the antisymmetric C-H stretch vibration (Îœ3) was found to be less efficient than an equivalent amount of translational energy normal to the sur-face for promoting the dissociation on all the surface sites. The vibrational efficacy was seen to be lower for dissociation on the low coordinated sites, in accordance with calculations of transition state geometries. For CH3D, the excitation of the antisymmetric C-H stretch vibration (Îœ4) led to bond selec-tivity on the steps and terraces of the Pt(211) surface. These results show how careful control of the translational energy and rovibrational state of the incident CH3D can be used for site-specific and bond-selective dissociation of methane. As predicted previously by theory but not observed before experi-mentally, the C-H bond selectivity is shown to decrease with increasing translational energy. Third, I explore the effect of surface temperature on the methane dissocia-tion. The sticking coefficient for a direct chemisorption reaction such as CH4 on Pt, might be expected to be independent of surface temperature, because the reaction happens very fast leaving very little time for the molecule to equilibrate with the surface. However, I observed an increase in methane reactivity with increasing surface temperature at low incident CH4 energies. This observation is interpreted by a âloss of coordinationâ from the atoms displaced out of the plane due to their vibrational motion when the surface is heated. The surface-site and quantum-state-specific data presented in this thesis are ideally suitable for testing theoretical models that aim to describe the me-thane-surface reaction at the microscopic level. Moreover, the characteriza-tion of different catalytically active sites for methane dissociation contrib-utes to advancing the understanding of methane reactivity towards real cata-lytic conditions, where surfaces with several different atomic terminations are used.

EPFL2019

State-to-state scattering of CH₄ from Ni(111) and Gr/Ni(111)

Maarten Eduard van Reijzen

In this thesis, I describe the design and implementation of the first state-to-state surface scattering experiments for methane from clean single crystalline surfaces in ultrahigh vacuum. The experiments use infrared laser pumping to prepare the incident CH4 in a specific rovibrationally excited quantum state and detect the scattered methane molecules with quantum state resolution using a cryogenic bolometer in combination with infrared laser tagging. To demonstrate the capabilities of this method, I present data on state-to-state scattering of CH4 from a Ni(111) and a graphene covered Ni(111) surface including the rotational and vibrational state distributions of the scattered molecules. For scattering of CH4 in its vibrational ground state, we observe significant rotational excitation. For incident CH4 with 9 kJ/mol of kinetic energy incident at 68° from the surface normal onto a Ni(111) surface at 673 K, rotational levels for J up to 10 are populated for the scattered CH4 corresponding to a rotational temperature of 162 K. The angular distribution of the scattered methane peaks near the specular angle. Both the angular distribution and the large difference between the rotational temperature of scattered CH4 and the temperature of the surface are evidence for a direct scattering process. Incident CH4 is prepared with one quantum of antisymmetric C-H stretch vibration in the v3=1 ,J=3 state by infrared pumping. The rotational and vibrational state distributions of the scattered methane are recorded by the bolometer detector using infrared laser tagging. For scattering from a clean Ni(111) surface, we observe that 40% of the scattered CH4 stays in the v3 state and therefore scatters vibrationally elastically. Vibrational relaxation during the scattering process is observed to populate the v1 state (15%) as well as the 2v2 (2%) vibrational state. No population above the detection limit was found in other vibrationally excited states at or below the energy of the v3 state (~3000 cm^(-1)). 8% of the scattered CH4 was detected in v=0. The fast energy dissipation of 0.37 eV may indicate the participation of electron-hole pair excitation in the scattering of CH4(v3,J=3) from the Ni(111) surface. To investigate the influence of the electronic structure of the surface on the energy transfer during scattering a layer of graphene was grown on the Ni(111) through chemical vapour deposition. The hybridization of the graphene and nickel electronic structures changes the metallic nature of the Ni(111) surface to that of an insulator for Gr/Ni(111). Scattering CH4(v3,J=3) from Gr/Ni(111) results in stronger rotational excitation but weaker vibrational energy transfer. 62% of incident CH4(v3,J=3) remained in the v3 state and no population could be detected in other vibrationally excited states. Relaxation to v=0 was reduced from 8% to 3% for scattering from Gr/Ni(111). State-to-state scattering experiments provide detailed information on the energy transfer processes in surface scattering. The bolometer infrared laser tagging (BILT) technique implemented in this thesis is shown to be a highly sensitive, quantum state resolved detection method that is generally applicable to polyatomic molecules with infared active vibrational modes. In contrast to resonance enhanced multiphoton ionization, BILT does not require a long lived excited electronic state which makes it ideally suited for state resolved scattering experiments of methane.

EPFL2016

Bond- and mode-specific reactivity of methane on Ni(100)

Plinio Maroni

In this work, the state-resolved reactivity of methane excited to different C-H stretch vibrations have been measured on a Ni(100) surface. Two kinds of experiments have been performed. In the first series of experiments, we have measured the reactivity of dideutero methane (CD2H2) excited in two different C-H stretch vibrational states which are nearly iso-energetic, but have different vibrational amplitudes. We observed that CD2H2 excited with two quanta of vibrational energy in one C-H bond were more reactive (by as much as a factor 5) than molecules excited with one quantum in each of two C-H bonds. This was the first time that state specificity has been observed in a gas-surface reaction. Our results clearly exclude the possibility of statistical models correctly describing the mechanisms of the methane chemisorption and highlight the importance of the dynamical calculations. We rationalize our results in terms of a spectator model and bond-specific reactivity, where the laser excited bond is broken in the reaction with the surface and the difference in reactivity of the two vibrational states is explained in terms of vibrational energy localized in a single C-H bond. Additionally, we have measured the state-resolved reactivity of CH4 in its totally symmetric C-H stretch vibration (ν1) on Ni(100). The methane molecules were excited to ν1 by stimulated Raman pumping prior the collision with the surface. We observed that the reactivity of the ν1 excited CH4 is about an order of magnitude higher than that of methane excited to the isoenergetic antisymmetric stretch (ν3) reported by Juurlink et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 868 (1999)] and is similar to that we have previously observed for the excitation of the first overtone (2ν3). Since all four bonds initially carry vibrational amplitude for both ν1 and ν3, the difference in reactivity between the symmetric and antisymmetric vibrations cannot simply be explained in terms of bond-specific laser excitation. We refer to this reactivity difference as mode-specific. In this case, the relative reactivity between two different vibrational states does not only depend on the quantity of vibrational energy contained in each bond, but it is also influenced by the symmetry of the vibrational state excited. Our results are consistent with predictions of a vibrationally adiabatic model of the methane reaction dynamics [Halonen et al., J. Chem. Phys. 115, 5611 (2001)].

EPFL2005