This book is to mark the seventieth birthday of Prof Xie Xide (Hsieh Hsi-Teh), a woman scientist well-known in Surface Science in China. This Festschrift contains contributions from well-known experts who review the progress in surface physics, as well as delve into the latest developments in the frontiers of surface physics research.
This book focuses on the chemistry and processes for conversion and utilization of carbon dioxide. Topics include CO 2 utilization, its conversion to industrial chemicals and fuels, its coversion via synthesis gas, and new catalysts and chemical processes for conversion.
Since the turn of the last century when the field of catalysis was born, iron and cobalt have been key players in numerous catalysis processes. These metals, due to their ability to activate CO and CH, haev a major economic impact worldwide. Several industrial processes and synthetic routes use these metals: biomass-to-liquids (BTL), coal-to-liquids (CTL), natural gas-to-liquids (GTL), water-gas-shift, alcohol synthesis, alcohol steam reforming, polymerization processes, cross-coupling reactions, and photocatalyst activated reactions. A vast number of materials are produced from these processes, including oil, lubricants, waxes, diesel and jet fuels, hydrogen (e.g., fuel cell applications), gasoline, rubbers, plastics, alcohols, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, feed-stock chemicals, and other alternative materials. However, given the true complexities of the variables involved in these processes, many key mechanistic issues are still not fully defined or understood. This Special Issue of Catalysis will be a collaborative effort to combine current catalysis research on these metals from experimental and theoretical perspectives on both heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts. We welcome contributions from the catalysis community on catalyst characterization, kinetics, reaction mechanism, reactor development, theoretical modeling, and surface science.
Because of the rapid increase in commercially available Fourier transform infrared spectrometers and computers over the past ten years, it has now become feasible to use IR spectrometry to characterize very thin films at extended interfaces. At the same time, interest in thin films has grown tremendously because of applications in microelectronics, sensors, catalysis, and nanotechnology. The Handbook of Infrared Spectroscopy of Ultrathin Films provides a practical guide to experimental methods, up-to-date theory, and considerable reference data, critical for scientists who want to measure and interpret IR spectra of ultrathin films. This authoritative volume also: Offers information needed to effectively apply IR spectroscopy to the analysis and evaluation of thin and ultrathin films on flat and rough surfaces and on powders at solid-gaseous, solid-liquid, liquid-gaseous, liquid-liquid, and solid-solid interfaces. * Provides full discussion of theory underlying techniques * Describes experimental methods in detail, including optimum conditions for recording spectra and the interpretation of spectra * Gives detailed information on equipment, accessories, and techniques * Provides IR spectroscopic data tables as appendixes, including the first compilation of published data on longitudinal frequencies of different substances * Covers new approaches, such as Surface Enhanced IR spectroscopy (SEIR), time-resolved FTIR spectroscopy, high-resolution microspectroscopy and using synchotron radiation
Design of new molecular materials is emerging as a new interdisciplinary research field. Corresponding reports are scattered in literature, and this book constitutes one of the first attempts to overview ongoing research efforts. It provides basic information, as well as the details of theory and examples of its application, to experimentalists and theoreticians interested in modeling molecular properties and putting into practice rational design of new materials.
As a result of the advancements in algorithms and the huge increase in speed of computers over the past decade, electronic structure calculations have evolved into a valuable tool for characterizing surface species and for elucidating the pathways for their formation and reactivity. It is also now possible to calculate, including electric field effects, STM images for surface structures. To date the calculation of such images has been dominated by density functional methods, primarily because the computational cost of - curate wave-function based calculations using either realistic cluster or slab models would be prohibitive. DFT calculations have proven especially valuable for elucidating chemical processes on silicon and other semiconductor surfaces. However, it is also clear that some of the systems to which DFT methods have been applied have large non-dynamical correlation effects, which may not be properly handled by the current generation of Kohn-Sham-based density functionals. For example, our CASSCF calculations on the Si(001)/acetylene system reveal that at some geometries there is extensive 86 configuration mixing. This, in turn, could signal problems for DFT cal- lations on these systems. Some of these problem systems can be addressed using ONIOM or other “layering” methods, treating the primary region of interest with a CASMP2 or other multireference-based method, and treating the secondary region by a lower level of electronic structure theory or by use of a molecular mechanics method. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to thank H. Jónsson, C. Sosa, D. Sorescu, P. Nachtigall, and T. -C.
Predicting molecular structure and energy and explaining the nature of bonding are central goals in quantum chemistry. With this book, the editors assert that the density functional (DF) method satisfies these goals and has come into its own as an advanced method of computational chemistry. The wealth of applications presented in the book, ranging from solid state sys tems and polymers to organic and organo-metallic molecules, metallic clus ters, and biological complexes, prove that DF is becoming a widely used computational tool in chemistry. Progress in the methodology and its imple mentation documented by the contributions in this book demonstrate that DF calculations are both accurate and efficient. In fact, the results of DF calculations may pleasantly surprise many chem ists. Even the simplest approximation of DF, the local spin density method (LSD), yields molecular structures typical of ab initio correlated methods. The next level of theory, the nonlocal spin density method, predicts the energies of molecular processes within a few kcallmol or less. Like the Hartree-Fock (HF) and configuration interaction (CI) methods, the DF method is based only on fundamental physical constants. Therefore, it does not require semiempirical parameters and can be applied to any molecular system and to metallic phases. However, DF's greatest advantage is that it can be applied to much larger systems than those approachable by tradition al ab initio methods, especially when compared with correlated ab initio methods.
Lists citations with abstracts for aerospace related reports obtained from world wide sources and announces documents that have recently been entered into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Database.
