Real-time measurements of reaction intermediates and adsorbed species in heterogeneous catalytic reaction systems

With multichannel detection, in situSurface-Enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is demonstrated to provide a viable and valuable means of examining adsorption and reactions at transition metal surfaces in gas phase environments, especially at high pressures and elevated temperatures of relevance to heterogeneous catalysis where other vibrational techniques are of limited utility. In fact, an enticing virtue of SERS is the ability to acquire time-resolved spectra; with the advent of charge-coupled device (CCD) technology, real-time sequences even in the subsecond time regime are now becoming straightforward.