Thermal desorption of cyanogen from Pt(100)

Thermal desorption of cyanogen adsorbed on Pt(100) was studied by flash desorption mass spectrometry. By investigating the parent ion and all possible fragmentation products in the mass spectrometer during desorption it was concluded, that desorption takes place exclusively as molecular C₂N₂. Three desorption peaks were observed at 140, 410 and 480°C denoted as α, β₁ and β₂. The respective surface coverages at saturation were determined by quantitative evaluation of the flash desorption curves to be 2.0 ± 0.2 × 10¹⁴ and 5.5 ± 1.0 × 10¹⁴$\text{molecules}\text{cm}{}^2$ for the α and the β states, respectively. First order desorption kinetics was suggested by the coverage dependencé of the desorption spectra for both α and β states with desorption energies of 12 and 38–42 $\text{kcal}\text{mole}$, respectively. A large difference in the sticking probabilities of α and β states was observed with initial values of 0.06 (α) and 0.9 (β). Adsorption experiments at elevated temperatures led to the assumption, that α and β states coexist on the surface with no or very little interactions between them. The results are discussed in terms of different models for the adsorption states.