PNNL

Abstract

The research described in this product was performed in part in the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a national scientific user facility sponsored by the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research and located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Modification of the structure of materials at the nanoscale level is one goal of current nanoscience research. For example, by purposefully modifying the spatial distribution of adsorbates, the rate of chemical reactions could be controlled on a local scale. Herein, we show how this goal can be accomplished in the case of hydrogen on Pd(111) through the application of local electric fields. Hydrogen adsorption on the Group 10 metals is particularly interesting, because these metals are used as catalysts in a variety of industrial processes, including hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions.[1, 2] Electric fields on surfaces are also of primary interest in electrochemistry,[3, 4] and despite the considerable amount of experimental and theoretical work done to date,[5–12] there still remains more work to be done before a clear understanding of electric-field-induced phenomena at the atomic scale can be gained.