Effects of Vibrational and Rotational Excitations on Dissociative Chemisorption Dynamics of N_(2) on Fe(111)

The dissociative chemisorption of N_(2) is the rate-limiting step for ammonia synthesis in industry.Here,we investigated the role of initially vibrational excitation and ro-tational excitation of N_(2) for its reactivity on the Fe(111)surface,based on a recently developed six-dimensional potential energy surface.Six-dimensional quantum dynamics study was carried out to investi-gate the effect of vibrational excitation for incidence energy below 1.6 eV,due to sig-nificant quantum effects for this reaction.The effects of vibrational and rotational excitations at high incidence energies were revealed by quasiclassical trajectory calculations.We found that raising the translational energy can enhance the dissociation probability to some extent,however,the vibrational excitation or rotational excitation can promote disso-ciation more efficiently than the same amount of translational energy.This study provides valuable insight into the mode-specific dynamics of this heavy diatom-surface reaction.

Mode-specific and bond-selective dissociative chemisorption of CHD_3 and CH_2D_2 on Ni(111) revisited using a new potential energy surface

Dissociative chemisorption of methane on a nickel surface is a prototypical system for studying mode-specific chemistry in gassurface reactions.We recently developed a fifteen-dimensional potential energy surface for this system which has proven to be chemically accurate in reproducing the measured absolute dissociative sticking probabilities of CHD_3in thermal conditions and with vibrational excitation on Ni(111)at high incident energies.Here,using this new potential energy surface,we explored mode specificity and bond selectivity for CHD_3and CH_2D_2dissociative chemisorption at low incidence energies down to^50 k J/mol via a quasi-classical trajectory method.Our calculated dissociation probabilities are consistent with previous theoretical and experimental ones with an average shift in translational energy of^8 k J/mol.Our results very well reproduce the C–H/C–D branching ratio upon the C–H local mode excitation,which can be rationalized by the sudden vector projection model.Quantitatively,however,the calculated dissociative sticking probabilities are systematically larger than experimental ones,due presumably to the artificial zero point energy leakage into reaction coordinate.Further high-dimensional quantum dynamics calculations are necessary for acquiring a chemically accurate description of methane dissociative chemisorption at low incident energies.