Carbon monoxide dissociation on Rh nanopyramids

Phys Rev Lett. 2006 Aug 4;97(5):056103. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.056103. Epub 2006 Aug 3.

Abstract

CO dissociation on rhomboidal faceted nanopyramids, produced on Rh(110) by fine-tuning of ion irradiation conditions, has been studied by high resolution core-level spectroscopy. We find that this morphology presents a large efficiency towards CO dissociation, a process which is inhibited on flat (110) terraces. We also measured the reactivity of nanostructures bound by different artificial step distributions identifying the sites responsible for the molecular bond disruption in the undercoordinated (n=6) edges running along the [11[over ]2] equivalent directions, with CO sitting in on-top configuration.