Recent developments in the vibrational spectroscopies (infrared,Raman, electron energy loss etc.) as applied to the structural analysis of species chemisorbed on metal surfaces

An account is given of the methods of vibrational spectroscopy that are nowadays used to obtain structural information about species adsorbed on metal catalyst surfaces. The discussion deals separately with experiments involving a) oxide-supported metal catalysts in the finely divided form, and b) specific surfaces of metal single crystals. A discussion is also given of the advantages and limitations of each method, e.g. infrared transmission and Raman spectroscopy in the case of finely-divided metals, and electron energy loss spectroscopy and reflection-absorption infrared spectroscopy as used for metal single crystals.Infrared and Raman spectroscopic studies of ligands attached to multi-atom metal clusters are shown to lead to convincing identifications of species adsorbed on single crystal surfaces. The latter results in turn contribute to the understanding of the overlapping spectra from several different adsorbed species that commonly occur on finely-divided metal catalysts.