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Updated: Mar 11, 2026

In Situ SIMS and IR Spectroscopy of Well-defined Surfaces Prepared by Soft Landing of Mass-selected Ions
Published on: June 16, 2014
Chemical softness as a predictor for reactivity at metal surfaces
Amy L Gunton1, Stephen J Jenkins1
1Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK. sjj24@cam.ac.uk.
None:
The problem of identifying and characterising the active sites for heterogeneous catalysis can be addressed by employing descriptors of reactivity, such as the local softness. A new method of calculating the local softness for metal surfaces was recently developed and in the present work has been applied to eighteen flat and stepped metal surfaces. The local softness has been visualised and shown to give insight into the potential reactivity of different sites. A more granular local measure of the softness - the atomic softness - has also been calculated and used to predict CO adsorption trends.
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