| Abstract: | A more complete understanding of the structural and mechanistic details of a catalyzed heterogeneous reaction leads both directly and indirectly to the development of new and better catalysts. For catalyst technology, the most sensitive probe of catalysts performance will continue to be the rate and selectivity of a chemical reaction. However, these macroscopic observations, adequate for determining how good a catalyst is, require supplementary microscopic information to remove ambiguity in the deduction of a catalytic mechanism. This information, almost down to the atomic level, concerning the structure and reactivity of the intermediates, the nature of adsorption sites (and sometimes the active sites) and their number, is the main objective of the science of catalysis. The most promising approach to this problem is the use of suitable probe molecules for the quantitative titration of site density and qualitative characterization of their nature by means of surface spectroscopies of the chemisorbed probe molecules 1, 21. This framework of action is schematically represented in Fig.1. |
