Femtosecond dynamics of chemical reactions at surfaces

One of the major goals in physical chemistry is to obtain a microscopic understanding of chemical reactions. Recent developments in femtosecond laser techniques provide the opportunity to resolve the timescale of elementary steps of chemical reactions at surfaces. This is exemplified for the femtosecond laser-induced oxidation of CO on Ru(001). Among other adsorbate-specific probes vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy offers the possibility to monitor adsorbates or reaction intermediates directly at the surface. Recently, we have employed this technique to investigate the dynamics of the CO-stretch vibration of CO adsorbed on Ru(001) after optical excitation leading to CO desorption. Received: 4 August 2000 / Accepted: 2 September 2000 / Published online: 12 October 2000