Structural sensitivity studies of ethylene hydrogenation on platinum and rhodium surfaces

The catalytic hydrogenation of ethylene and hydrogen on the well characterized surfaces of the noble metals platinum and rhodium has been studied for the purposes of determining the relative activity of these two substrates as well as the degree of structure sensitivity. The Pt(111) and the Rh(755) single crystal surfaces, as well as Pt and Rh foils, were employed as substrates to study the effect of surface step structure on reactivity. In addition, vibrational spectroscopy studies were performed for ethylene adsorption on the stepped Rh(755) surface.;The catalytic reaction were obtained using a combined ultrahigh vacuum chamber coupled with an atmospheric pressure reaction chamber that functioned as a batch reactor. Samples could be prepared using standard surface science techniques and characterized for surface composition and geometry using Auger Electron Spectroscopy and Low Energy Electron Diffraction.;A comparison of the reactivity of Rh(111) with the results from this study on Rh(755) allows a direct determination of the effect of step structure on ethylene hydrogenation activity. Structure sensitivity is expected to exhibit orders of magnitude differences in rate as surface orientation is varied. In this case, no significant differences were found, confirming the structure insensitivity of this reaction over this metal. The turnover frequency of the Rh(111) surface, ;High Resolution Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy studies of adsorbed ethylene on the Rh(755) surface compare favorably with the ethylidyne spectra obtained on the Rh(111) and Rh(100) surfaces. In general, the vibrational modes of the various functional groups associated with the adsorbed ethylidyne species do not differ greatly from the stepped or flat surfaces. One difference may be the observed shift in the C-C stretching frequency from 1120 cm...