1. Dissociation Mechanism of a Single O2 Molecule Chemisorbed on Ag(110)
- Author
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Chi Zhang, Minhui Lee, Jun Takeya, Yousoo Kim, Emiko Kazuma, Jaehoon Jung, and Michael Trenary
- Subjects
Materials science ,Fermi level ,Anharmonicity ,Dissociation (chemistry) ,law.invention ,Condensed Matter::Materials Science ,symbols.namesake ,Chemical physics ,law ,Physics::Atomic and Molecular Clusters ,symbols ,Density of states ,Molecule ,General Materials Science ,Density functional theory ,Physics::Chemical Physics ,Physical and Theoretical Chemistry ,Scanning tunneling microscope ,Spectroscopy - Abstract
The dissociation of O2 molecules chemisorbed on silver surfaces is an essential reaction in industry, and the dissociation mechanism has long attracted attention. The detailed dissociation mechanism was studied at the single-molecule level on Ag(110) by using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The dissociation reaction was found to be predominantly triggered by inelastically tunneled holes from the STM tip due to the significantly distributed density of states below the Fermi level of the substrate. A combination of action spectroscopy with the STM and density functional theory calculations revealed that the O2 dissociation reaction is caused by direct ladder-climbing excitation of the high-order overtones of the O-O stretching mode arising from anharmonicity enhanced by molecule-surface interactions.
- Published
- 2021
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