The mechanism of methanol formation and other reactions following formaldehyde adsorption on Ni(110)

The adsorption/desorption and reactive behavior of formaldehyde was studied on clean single-crystal Ni(110) at adsorption temperatures down to 200 °K. For low exposures of the surface to formaldehyde, hydrogen and CO binding states were populated due to decomposition of the molecule upon adsorption. Higher exposures gave rise to a decomposition-limited hydrogen peak exhibiting an activation energy of 20 kcal/gmol and an apparent frequency factor of 10¹⁴ sec^?1. At initial coverages of H₂CO exceeding about 0.5, monolayer methanol was observed to form. The formation of methanol involved a hydrogen atom transfer between two adsorbed H₂CO molecules and did not occur totally via surface hydrogen. Self-oxidation to form CO₂ was also observed. The surface exhibited reaction heterogeneity, and the surface reactivity was observed to depend on the temperature of adsorption of reactants, suggesting strong adsorbate-induced surface “reconstruction.”