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This book contains the proceedings of the first Workshop on Interface Phenomena, organized jointly by the surface science groups at Dalhousie University and the University of Maine. It was our intention to concentrate on just three topics related to the kinetics of interface reactions which, in our opinion, were frequently obscured unnecessarily in the literature and whose fundamental nature warranted an extensive discussion to help clarify the issues, very much in the spirit of the Discussions of the Faraday Society. Each session (day) saw two principal speakers expounding the different views; the session chairmen were asked to summarize the ensuing discussions. To understand the complexity of interface reactions, paradigms must be formulated to provide a framework for the interpretation of experimen tal data and for the construction of theoretical models. Phenomenological approaches have been based on a small number of rate equations for the concentrations or mole numbers of the various species involved in a par ticular system with the relevant rate constants either fitted (in the form of the Arrheniusparametrization) to experimental data or calculated on the basis of microscopic models. The former procedure can at best serve as a guide to the latter, and is, in most cases, confined to ruling out certain reaction pathways rather than to ascertaining a unique answer.
List of contents
I Adsorption-Desorption Kinetics: Dynamics versus Thermodynamics.- Equilibrium and Non-equilibrium Effects in Adsorption-Desorption Kinetics: Influences of Interaction Dynamics, Reaction Kinetics, and Statistical Mechanics of the Adlayer.- Kinetics and Dynamics of Gas-Surface Interaction: The Principles of Detailed Balance and Unitarity.- Energy Distributions of Thermally Desorbed Molecules: NO on AG(111) and Pt(111)..- Nonequilibrium Desorption of Physisorbed Atoms.- Studies of Surface Kinetics Using Second-Harmonic Generation.- Direct Measurements of Surface Kinetics by Time-Resolved Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy.- Isotopic Effects in the Adsorption and Desorption of Hydrogen by Ni (111).- Adsorption-Desorption Kinetics: Some Comments.- II Precursors: Myth or Reality?.- Precursor Intermediates and Precursor-Mediated Surface Reactions: General Concepts, Direct Observations and Indirect Manifestations.- Precursor States, Myth or Reality: A Perspective from Molecular Beam Studies.- Molecular Beam Studies of Dissociative Chemisorption on W(110).- The Role of Precursors in Molecular Chemisorption and Thermal Desorption.- Adsorption and Reaction of CO2 on Metal Surfaces. Detection of an Intrinsic Precursor to Dissociation.- Influence of Electronic and Geometric Structure on Desorption Kinetics of Isoelectronic Polar Molecules: NH3 and H2O.- A Molecular Orbital Analysis of Chemisorption Precursor States.- Thermal and Non-thermal Activation of Si(100) Surface Nitridation.- Precursor Mediated and Direct Adsorption: Two Channels Leading to Chemisorption.- III Kinetics of Phase Transitions at Surfaces.- Experiments on Kinetic Effects at Phase Transitions.- Kinetics of Adatom Ordering on Surfaces.- Kinetics of Domain Growth in a Model of O/Pd(110).- The Influence of Hydrogenon the Infrared Spectrum of N2 Chemisorbed on the Ni(110) Surface.- The Reaction of Carbon Monoxide with Chemisorbed Oxygen on Pd(110): An Example of a Structure-Sensitive Reaction.- Conformal Invariance, Multiple Scattering and the Au(110) (1×2) to (1×1) Phase Transition.- Self-sustained Kinetic Oscillations in the Catalytic CO Oxidation on Platinum.- Kinetics of Surface Phase Transitions: Some Comments.- Index of Contributors.
