Insights into surface reactivity: formic acid oxidation on Cu(110) studied using STM and a molecular beam reactor

Abstract

Using a combination of STM and molecular beam reactor data we summarise some important features of a model reaction (formic acid oxidation on Cu(110)) which is of general significance to surface reactivity and to catalysis. Three such features are highlighted here. The first concerns the role of weakly held species (possibly physisorbed) in surface reactions. These species, although of very short lifetime on the surface, can, nevertheless, diffuse over long distances to “find” a sparse distribution of active sites. Thus a very low coverage of oxygen on the surface of Cu(110) increases the sticking probability of all the formic acid molecules which strike the surface to high value (0.82), even though the clean surface is relatively unreactive. The important concept here is the “diffusion circle” or “collection zone” which represents the area of surface visited by the molecule in its short sojourn in the weakly held state. The second theme concerns the concept of the “flexible surface”. We show that the involvement of surface atoms in reactions directs the structure and reactivity for a particular reaction. For formic acid oxidation the liberation of Cu atoms during the removal of oxygen as water leads to gross restructuring of the surface and can lead to “compression” of one reactant (the oxygen in this case) into a lower area, higher local coverage, unreactive state (the c(6×2) oxygen structure). Thirdly, and finally, it is proposed that, for many surface reactions, the surface acts in an analogous way to a solvent, supporting a “dissolved” (highly mobile and fluxional) phase of intermediates at low coverage, which crystallise out above a critical coverage (the 2D “solubility limit”).