Oxidation and reduction of mass-selected Au clusters on SiO2/Si.
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Biomedical subjects
Gerd Ganteför
Publications and source records attributed to Gerd Ganteför.
Interactions of Au cluster anions with oxygen.
Experimental and theoretical evidence is presented for the nondissociative chemisorption of O2 on free Au cluster anions (Aun-, n=number of atoms) with n=2, 4, 6 at room temperature, indicating that the stabilization of the activated di-oxygen species is the key for the unusual catalytic activities of Au-based catalysts. In contrast to Aun- with n=2, 4, 6, O2 adsorbs atomically on Au monomer anions. For the Au monomer neutral, calculations based on density functional theory reveal that oxygen should be molecularly bound. On Au dimer and tetramer neutrals, oxygen is molecularly bound with the O-O bond being less activated with respect to their anionic counterparts, suggesting that the excess electron in the anionic state plays a crucial role for the O-O activation. We demonstrate that interplay between experiments on gas phase clusters and theoretical approach can be a promising strategy to unveil mechanisms of elementary steps in nanocatalysis.
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Transition from atomic to molecular adsorption of oxygen on tungsten monomer anion.
Using vibrationally resolved ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy, we studied oxygen adsorption on W monomer anions. Three oxygen atoms are atomically bound in a WO3- compound, whereas in WO4- the fourth oxygen atom is attached to the oxygen, forming a di-oxygen species, implying that atom to molecule transition of O2 takes place when the number of oxygen atoms attached to a W monomer anion exceeds three. Our results indicate that molecular adsorption of oxygen is preferred on electron-deficient metals, showing that the driving force of the atom to molecule transition for the chemisorption of diatomic molecules can be the variations of electronic structures of metal hosts.
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Anomalous behavior of atomic hydrogen interacting with gold clusters.
The change in the electronic structure of Au(n)- clusters induced by the exchange of an Au atom by hydrogen is studied using photoelectron spectroscopy. Au anion clusters react with one hydrogen atom but not with molecular hydrogen. The spectra of Au(n)- and Au(n-1)H- clusters show almost identical features for n > 2 suggesting that hydrogen behaves as a protonated species by contributing one electron to the valence pool of the Au(n)- cluster. This behavior is in sharp contrast to that of the commonly understood electronic structure of hydrogen in metals; namely, it attracts an electron from the conduction band of the metal and remains in an "anionic" form or forms covalent bonding. We discuss the influence of the unique electronic structure of H on the unusual catalytic behavior of Au clusters.
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Direct observation of key reaction intermediates on gold clusters.
Using ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy, we provide direct experimental evidence that di-oxygen species are stable on anionic gold dimer and tetramer clusters at room temperature. The stabilization of molecular oxygen is crucial for the high activities of the low-temperature reactions on gold catalysts.
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Isomer-resolved ion spectroscopy.
We demonstrate the isomer-resolved spectroscopy of gas-phase ions, with different geometries separated prior to spectroscopic probe using ion mobility techniques. Specifically, ring and chain isomers of carbon cluster anions with 10;-12 atoms have been separated by ion mobility/mass spectrometry and examined by photoelectron spectroscopy. This methodology should also apply to other ion spectroscopies, including IR photodissociation.
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Highest electron affinity as a predictor of cluster anion structures.
Small clusters have a range of unique physical and chemical phenomena that are strongly size dependent. However, analysis of these phenomena often assumes that thermodynamic equilibrium conditions prevail. We compare experimentally measured and ab initio computed photoelectron spectra of bare and deuterated silicon cluster anions produced in a plasma environment. We find that the isomers detected experimentally are usually not the ground-state isomers, but metastable ones, which indicates that cluster relaxation is strongly limited kinetically by a dwell time that is much shorter than the relaxation time. We show that, under these conditions, the highest electron affinity replaces the traditional lowest total energy as the appropriate criterion for predicting isomer structures. These findings demonstrate that a stringent examination of non-equilibrium effects can be crucial for a correct analysis of cluster properties.
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