TY  - JOUR
AU  - Yang, Xiaosheng
AU  - Egger, Larissa
AU  - Hurdax, Philipp
AU  - Kaser, Hendrik
AU  - Lüftner, Daniel
AU  - Bocquet, François C.
AU  - Koller, Georg
AU  - Gottwald, Alexander
AU  - Tegeder, Petra
AU  - Richter, Mathias
AU  - Ramsey, Michael G.
AU  - Puschnig, Peter
AU  - Soubatch, Serguei
AU  - Tautz, F. Stefan
TI  - Identifying surface reaction intermediates with photoemission tomography
JO  - Nature Communications
VL  - 10
IS  - 1
SN  - 2041-1723
CY  - [London]
PB  - Nature Publishing Group UK
M1  - FZJ-2019-03534
SP  - 3189
PY  - 2019
AB  - The determination of reaction pathways and the identification of reaction intermediates are key issues in chemistry. Surface reactions are particularly challenging, since many methods of analytical chemistry are inapplicable at surfaces. Recently, atomic force microscopy has been employed to identify surface reaction intermediates. While providing an excellent insight into the molecular backbone structure, atomic force microscopy is less conclusive about the molecular periphery, where adsorbates tend to react with the substrate. Here we show that photoemission tomography is extremely sensitive to the character of the frontier orbitals. Specifically, hydrogen abstraction at the molecular periphery is easily detected, and the precise nature of the reaction intermediates can be determined. This is illustrated with the thermally induced reaction of dibromo-bianthracene to graphene which is shown to proceed via a fully hydrogenated bisanthene intermediate. We anticipate that photoemission tomography will become a powerful companion to other techniques in the study of surface reaction pathways.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:31320632
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000475852900032
DO  - DOI:10.1038/s41467-019-11133-9
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/863480
ER  -