Berlin 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 57: Electronic structure of surfaces: Spectroscopy, surface states II

O 57.1: Hauptvortrag

Mittwoch, 14. März 2018, 10:30–11:00, MA 042

Hydrogen Atom Adsorption on Surfaces Studied in Inelastic Scattering Experiments — •Oliver Buenermann — Georg-August Universität Göttingen, Germany

The first step in most reactions at surfaces is the adsorption of the reactants. For this to happen their translational and binding energy have to be dissipated to the solid. In inelastic scattering experiments, adsorption can be studied on model systems in great detail. Based on such experiments new theoretical models can be developed that accurately describe the delicate interplay between electronic and nuclear motion in prototypical chemical reactions. Hydrogen adsorption is of special interest, as the small mass of the atoms leads to an inefficient phonon coupling, but sticking probabilities on surfaces can still be high.

Recently, we could show that in case of H-atom scattering from Au(111) a large amount of the translational energy can be transferred to electronic excitation of the metal [1]. We expanded our studies to various surfaces including a set of metals, insulators, and graphene. Furthermore, the influence of the projectile mass was investigated by replacing hydrogen by its heavier isotope deuterium. The experimentally observed dependencies are presented and their implication for the underlying energy transfer processes are discussed.

[1] Bünermann, O. et al., Science 350, 1346-1349 (2015).