Quasiclassical study of Eley–Rideal and hot atom reactions of H atoms with Cl adsorbed on a Au(111) surface

Abstract

Using quasiclassical methods and a potential energy surface based on total energy calculations, we have found that H atoms react with Cl atoms adsorbed onto a Au(111) surface to produce HCl via Eley-Rideal (ER), hot atom (HA), and Langmuir-Hinschelwood (LH) pathways. We observe two ER mechanisms. At small normal incidence energies reaction results from a more or less direct collision with Cl, leading to a large amount of product vibration (nu=8), and relatively cold rotation and translation. In the second mechanism, more dominant at near-normal incidence and/or large incident energies, the H atom passes near Cl, recoils from the metal, and is pulled into orbit about Cl. This leads to broader product state distributions, and a more even distribution of the 3.0 eV of available energy among the product degrees of freedom, similar to products formed via the HA pathway. Overall, ER processes tend to contribute less than 10% to the reactivity, and most of the HCl is formed via HA processes. There is an increase in HCl formation with surface temperature for both the ER and HA mechanisms, but this increase is relatively weak. We observe typically about 12% H atom sticking, which would lead to HCl formation via a LH process in the experiments, above 140 K. We observe a weak forward scattering due to the direct ER component, as in the experiments. However, unlike the experiments, we observe a dip in our product angular distributions about thetaf=0 degrees, which we ascribe to our quasiclassical approximation. While we tend to see more energy in the hot products than in the experiments, our product translational, rotational, and vibrational distributions are in relatively reasonable agreement with those measured. One major disagreement with experiment is that there is apparently a significant sticking of the H atom at low temperatures, leading to a large LH component. In addition, the ER and HA components increase much more strongly with temperature than in the calculations. It is possible that electon-hole pair excitations in the metal strongly relax both the H atom and the excited HCl molecules formed.