We report x-ray emission and absorption spectroscopy studies of the electronic structure of the pre-dissociative alpha(3) phase of CO bound at hollow sites of Fe(100) as well as of the on-top bound species in the high-coverage alpha(1) phase. The analysis is supported by density functional calculations of structures and spectra. The bonding of lying down CO in the hollow site is well described in terms of pi to pi* charge transfer made possible through bonding interaction also at the oxygen in the minority spin-channel. The on-top CO in the mixed, high-coverage alpha(1) phase is found to be tilted due to adsorbate-adsorbate interaction, but still with bonding mainly characteristic of vertical on-top adsorbed CO similar to other transition-metal surfaces.

We studied femtosecond laser-induced desorption of CO from Ru(0001) using intense near-infrared and visible femtosecond laser pulses. We find a pronounced wavelength dependence with a factor 3-4 higher desorption yield at comparable fluence when desorption is induced via 400 nm light, compared to 800 nm and attribute this difference to the difference in penetration depth of the incident light. All our data can be described using empirical friction-modeling to determine the desorption mechanism with the same mechanism for both wavelengths. We find that both hot electrons and phonons contribute to the desorption process.

We report on an experimental system designed to probe chemical reactions on solid surfaces on a sub-picosecond timescale using soft X-ray emission spectroscopy at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) free electron laser (FEL) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. We analyzed the O 1s X-ray emission spectra recorded from atomic oxygen adsorbed on a Ru(0001) surface at a synchrotron beamline (SSRL, BL13-2) and an FEL beamline (LCLS, SXR). We have demonstrated conditions that provide negligible amount of FEL induced damage of the sample. In addition we show that the setup is capable of tracking the temporal evolution of electronic structure during a surface reaction of submonolayer quantities of CO molecules desorbing from the surface.

We used the Linac Coherent Light Source free-electron x-ray laser to probe the electronic structure of CO molecules as their chemisorption state on Ru(0001) changes upon exciting the substrate by using a femtosecond optical laser pulse. We observed electronic structure changes that are consistent with a weakening of the CO interaction with the substrate but without notable desorption. A large fraction of the molecules (30%) was trapped in a transient precursor state that would precede desorption. We calculated the free energy of the molecule as a function of the desorption reaction coordinate using density functional theory, including van der Waals interactions. Two distinct adsorption wells-chemisorbed and precursor state separated by an entropy barrier-explain the anomalously high prefactors often observed in desorption of molecules from metals.

We have studied the femtosecond dynamics following optical laser excitation of CO adsorbed on a Ru surface by monitoring changes in the occupied and unoccupied electronic structure using ultrafast soft x-ray absorption and emission. We recently reported [M. Dell'Angela et al. Science 339, 1302 (2013)] a phonon-mediated transition into a weakly adsorbed precursor state occurring on a time scale of >2 ps prior to desorption. Here we focus on processes within the first picosecond after laser excitation and show that the metal-adsorbate coordination is initially increased due to hot-electron-driven vibrational excitations. This process is faster than, but occurs in parallel with, the transition into the precursor state. With resonant x-ray emission spectroscopy, we probe each of these states selectively and determine the respective transient populations depending on optical laser fluence. Ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of CO adsorbed on Ru(0001) were performed at 1500 and 3000 K providing insight into the desorption process.

We demonstrate that temperature-programmed vibrational sum-frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy has a unique sensitivity to certain adsorbate overlayer structural transitions. In the CO stretching vibration of co-adsorbed CO/O(2x1)/Ru(0001) we observe pronounced dips in the spectral intensity as the adsorbate overlayer undergoes structural transitions with temperature. Combining with temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) a more complete picture of temperature-dependent structural transitions is obtained. We extract kinetic parameters from the SFG data and obtain good agreement with TPD when both techniques see the same transition. Infrared-infrared visible SFG is used to determine changes in inter-adsorbate coupling that allow us to experimentally assign the structural transitions. Furthermore, density functional theory calculations of the proposed structures and energetics are performed to verify the experimental assignments.

We studied CO oxidation on Ru(0001) induced by 400 nm and 800 nm femtosecond laser pulses where we find a branching ratio between CO oxidation and desorption of 1: 9 and 1: 31, respectively, showing higher selectivity towards CO oxidation for the shorter wavelength excitation. Activation energies computed with density functional theory show discrepancies with values extracted from the experiments, indicating both a mixture between different adsorbed phases and importance of non-adiabatic effects on the effective barrier for oxidation. We simulated the reactions using kinetic modeling based on the two-temperature model of laser-induced energy transfer in the substrate combined with a friction model for the coupling to adsorbate vibrations. This model gives an overall good agreement with experiment except for the substantial difference in yield ratio between CO oxidation and desorption at 400 nm and 800 nm. However, including also the initial, non-thermal effect of electrons transiently excited into antibonding states of the O-Ru bond yielded good agreement with all experimental results.

Femtosecond x-ray laser pulses are used to probe the carbon monoxide (CO) oxidation reaction on ruthenium (Ru) initiated by an optical laser pulse. On a time scale of a few hundred femtoseconds, the optical laser pulse excites motions of CO and oxygen (O) on the surface, allowing the reactants to collide, and, with a transient close to a picosecond (ps), new electronic states appear in the OK-edge x-ray absorption spectrum. Density functional theory calculations indicate that these result from changes in the adsorption site and bond formation between CO and O with a distribution of OC-O bond lengths close to the transition state (TS). After 1 ps, 10% of the CO populate the TS region, which is consistent with predictions based on a quantum oscillator model.