Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 6 November 2009:
Vol. 326. no. 5954, pp. 829 - 832
DOI: 10.1126/science.1179240
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Dynamical Steering and Electronic Excitation in NO Scattering from a Gold Surface

Neil Shenvi,* Sharani Roy,*,{dagger} John C. Tully{ddagger}

Nonadiabatic coupling of nuclear motion to electronic excitations at metal surfaces is believed to influence a host of important chemical processes and has generated a great deal of experimental and theoretical interest. We applied a recently developed theoretical framework to examine the nature and importance of nonadiabatic behavior in a system that has been extensively studied experimentally: the scattering of vibrationally excited nitric oxide molecules from a Au(111) surface. We conclude that the nonadiabatic transition rate depends strongly on both the N-O internuclear separation and the molecular orientation and, furthermore, that molecule-surface forces can steer the molecule into strong-coupling configurations. This mechanism elucidates key features of the experiments and provides several testable predictions regarding the dependence of vibrational energy transfer on the initial vibrational energy, molecular orientation, and incident angle.

Department of Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} Present address: Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.

{ddagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail: John.tully{at}yale.edu

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Capturing the Complexities of Molecule-Surface Interactions.
E. Hasselbrink (2009)
Science 326, 809-810
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)