Speaker
Description
Gas-phase metal clusters can act as idealized model systems for the active sites of more complex catalysts, allowing for studies aimed at a fundamental understanding of metal-molecule interactions. In these experiments, we focus on understanding the adsorption of simple molecules on the model catalysts and establish the influence of local geometric and electronic structure as well as elemental composition. We do these investigations using a combination of mass-spectrometry, allowing studies of clusters with precise atomic and el-emental composition, and IR spectroscopy using the FELIX free-electron laser suite. The ex-perimental work is complemented by DFT calculations, allowing for structure determination and a rationalization of the formed products.
In this contribution, we present our results on the adsorption of CO2 onto metal clusters, and show how the variation of charge state (cations, anions), and elemental composition (type of metal, single element, multi-element) affect the cluster’s chemical activity.
| Scientific Topics | AMO Physics |
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