Adsorbate-induced lifting of substrate relaxation is a general mechanism governing titania surface chemistry

David Silber, Piotr M. Kowalski, Franziska Traeger, Maria Buchholz, Fabian Bebensee, Bernd Meyer () and Christof Wöll ()
Additional contact information
David Silber: Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1
Piotr M. Kowalski: Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK-6), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Wilhelm-Johnen-Strasse
Franziska Traeger: Westfälische Hochschule, FB 8, August-Schmidt-Ring 10
Maria Buchholz: Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1
Fabian Bebensee: Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1
Bernd Meyer: Interdisciplinary Center for Molecular Materials (ICMM) and Computer-Chemistry-Center (CCC), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Nägelsbachstrasse 25
Christof Wöll: Institute of Functional Interfaces (IFG), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Under ambient conditions, almost all metals are coated by an oxide. These coatings, the result of a chemical reaction, are not passive. Many of them bind, activate and modify adsorbed molecules, processes that are exploited, for example, in heterogeneous catalysis and photochemistry. Here we report an effect of general importance that governs the bonding, structure formation and dissociation of molecules on oxidic substrates. For a specific example, methanol adsorbed on the rutile TiO2(110) single crystal surface, we demonstrate by using a combination of experimental and theoretical techniques that strongly bonding adsorbates can lift surface relaxations beyond their adsorption site, which leads to a significant substrate-mediated interaction between adsorbates. The result is a complex superstructure consisting of pairs of methanol molecules and unoccupied adsorption sites. Infrared spectroscopy reveals that the paired methanol molecules remain intact and do not deprotonate on the defect-free terraces of the rutile TiO2(110) surface.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12888 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12888

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12888

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().