The Kinetics of CO Oxidation on RuO2(110): Bridging the Pressure Gap

The steady-state rate rCO2 of CO2 formation from CO + O2 on an epitaxially grown RuO2(110) single-crystal surface was recorded as a function of the partial pressures in the 10-7−10-6 mbar range. The RuO2(110) surface exposes singly coordinatively unsaturated “Ru-cus” sites and 2-fold coordinatively unsaturated “Ru-bridge” sites. Normally, the Ru-bridge sites are saturated by oxygen (O-bridge) which can be replaced by CO. The stage of the surface was controlled by vibrational spectroscopy (HREELS), and analysis of the kinetic data was based on previous information about the structural and adsorptive properties of this surface. Measurements of the rate as a function of temperature up to ≈350 K in a 1:1 mixture of CO and O2, each with 10-7 mbar partial pressure, revealed most remarkable agreement with data reported by Zang and Kisch13 with small supported RuO2 particles prepared from aqueous solution for 1 bar total pressure. Under these conditions of temperature and ratio of partial pressures the reaction w...