Size-Selected Clusters as Model Systems for Catalysis

Excerpt

The aim of this special issue is to highlight current experimental techniques that exploit size-selected clusters, predominantly in the gas phase, as model systems for understanding molecular-level processes relevant in heterogeneous catalysis. The metal and metal oxide clusters of relevance here, in principle, are relatively simple systems containing often only a few metal atoms (or sometimes even only a single) and are well defined in terms of their composition, size and charge state. Such cluster studies are always motivated by a fundamental curiosity for the properties of this intermediate form of matter. However, it is the transfer of molecular-level insights into the structure, stability and reactivity of isolated, stabilized or supported clusters to unravel more complex problems related to the local properties of reaction sites encountered in surface chemistry and ultimately catalysis, that makes these studies potentially interdisciplinary and transcending. …