Scaling properties of adsorption energies for hydrogen-containing molecules on transition-metal surfaces

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Jul 6;99(1):016105. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.016105. Epub 2007 Jul 6.

Abstract

Density functional theory calculations are presented for CHx, x=0,1,2,3, NHx, x=0,1,2, OHx, x=0,1, and SHx, x=0,1 adsorption on a range of close-packed and stepped transition-metal surfaces. We find that the adsorption energy of any of the molecules considered scales approximately with the adsorption energy of the central, C, N, O, or S atom, the scaling constant depending only on x. A model is proposed to understand this behavior. The scaling model is developed into a general framework for estimating the reaction energies for hydrogenation and dehydrogenation reactions.