Collision-induced migration of adsorbates on solid surfaces: an experimental approach

Collision-induced migration (CIM) is a process in which energetic gas-phase atoms or molecules at the tail of the Boltzmann distribution enhance surface migration of adsorbates upon collision. It is believed to exist and play an important role in any realistic high pressure-high-temperature heterogeneous catalytic system. Combining supersonic beam-surface collision setup with in-situ optical second harmonic generation diffraction technique from a coverage grating, we have shown, for the first time, that indeed energetic collisions (Kr seeded in He) promote surface mobility of CO-K surface complex on Ru(001) with a threshold total kinetic energy of 3 eV. An average migration distance/collision of more than 30 adsorption sites was estimated from the experimental data at Kr total energy of 3.8 eV. This long-range migration distance per collision is understood in terms of a cascade migration mechanism, where adsorbed CO molecules collide and push their neighbors from high to low coverage areas, in a direction dictated by the collision momentum vector. A similar mechanism has recently been suggested to explain adsorbate mobility at high coverage induced by an STM tip.