The mechanism of methanol formation and other reactions following formaldehyde adsorption on Ni(110)

✍ Scribed by J. Thomas Dickinson; Robert J. Madix

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1978
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 611 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0538-8066
• DOI: 10.1002/kin.550100807

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The adsorption/desorption and reactive behavior of formaldehyde was studied on clean single‐crystal Ni(110) at adsorption temperatures down to 200 °K. For low exposures of the surface to formaldehyde, hydrogen and CO binding states were populated due to decomposition of the molecule upon adsorption. Higher exposures gave rise to a decomposition‐limited hydrogen peak exhibiting an activation energy of 20 kcal/gmol and an apparent frequency factor of 10^14^ sec^−1^. At initial coverages of H~2~CO exceeding about 0.5, monolayer methanol was observed to form. The formation of methanol involved a hydrogen atom transfer between two adsorbed H~2~CO molecules and did not occur totally via surface hydrogen. Self‐oxidation to form CO~2~ was also observed. The surface exhibited reaction heterogeneity, and the surface reactivity was observed to depend on the temperature of adsorption of reactants, suggesting strong adsorbate‐induced surface “reconstruction.”