ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY
CHEMICAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING DIVISION
SPEAKER: Professor Dr. H.-J. Freund
Fritz-Haber-Institut
TITLE: Ultra-thin Oxide films as designable Model Catalysts
TIME: 2:00 pm
DATE: Friday, March 21, 2008
PLACE: Building 200, J-183
HOST: Julius Jellinek
Abstract: Low-temperature STM measurements combined with DFT calculations are employed to analyze the adsorption of gold on alumina/NiAl(110). The binding of Au monomers involves breaking of an oxide Al-O bond below the adatom and stabilizing the hence under-coordinated O ion by forming a new bond to an Al atom in the NiAl. The adsorption implies negative charging of the adatom. The linear arrangement of favorable binding sites induces the self-organization of Au atoms into chains. For every ad-chain, the number of electrons, in particular of transfer-electrons from the support, is determined by analyzing the node structure of its HOMO