Sum frequency generation study of CO adsorbed on palladium single crystal and nanoparticles : adsorption and catalytic oxidation as a function of size

The CO reaction on metals is of great interest experimentally and theoretically because it serves as a model system to understand molecular chemisorption and catalyzed reactions on metals. This thesis aims at progressing along the general trends of surface science: bridging the pressure and material gaps in the study of catalysts. Sum Frequency Generation (SFG) is at the heart of this work. It involves a nonlinear optical process with an IR pulse induced coherent first-order polarization up-converted by a visible pulse into a second-order polarization at the sum frequency. In this thesis it is used to record CO vibrational spectra on the Pd nanoparticles (NP)/MgO/Ag(100) to understand the adsorption and oxidation thanks to its specific advantages in surface science: sensitivity and surface selectivity. The questions proposed are the possible roles of the adsorption sites which only exist on the NPs, the effect of the size of NPs and the presence of oxygen on the CO adsorption and catalytic reactivity, the effect of adsorption of oxygen (from ‘normal’ – dissociative chemisorption to ‘sub-surface’), the variation of reactivity of CO in the different sites when pressure and temperature increase. (1) We have studied CO adsorption on Pd(100) as a reference. Below a CO coverage of 0.5 ML SFG results confirm previous IRAS studies. Above 0.5 ML, we have observed in much more details than previously two vibrational bands assigned to CO at compressed and uncompressed bridge sites, of which we have measured the frequency and intensity and the decoherence time T₂ as a function of coverage. (2) Pd NP size effect on CO adsorption is studied (from Pd(100) to particles with about 300 atoms). At pressures below 10⁻³ mbar the CO spectra on a coalesced layer and on large NPs are dominated by the same bridge band as on Pd(100). The CO singleton frequency decreases with coverage, revealing the evolution of chemisorption with size. DFT calculations done at ENS Lyon reveal that the main mechanism is the strain induced by the substrate which increases the Pd-Pd bondlength, favors electron back donation to CO, weakens the CO bond and probably reinforce the CO-metal bond. (3) Because of a limit of our maximal temperature, we have to study the CO catalytic oxidation in an excess of oxygen to avoid self-poisoning by CO. The results strongly suggest that bridge sites are the key sites in catalysis in our experimental condition. However, while a fraction of bridge sites are more reactive on NPs, a large fraction of them seem less reactive with respect to Pd(100). The reactivity of CO on (100) facet decreases at smaller NP size. It emerges the ideal that the reaction proceeds by the most reactive sites, and that the other sites are only reservoir in reactivity, if the diffusion between sites are high enough. Oxygen modifies the adsorption of co-reactants. In the case of CO + O / Pd NPs / MgO, below 10⁻⁴ mbar oxygen does not seem to influence significantly CO adsorption; between 10⁻³ and 10⁻¹ mbar the spectroscopic signature of CO compression disappears, and above 1 mbar a new class of a top sites appears, suggesting that some oxygen species (perhaps “subsurface”) favors CO adsorption on linear sites. A pump-probe experiment has been done to compare the effect of pump on different adsorption sites. All this confirms the interest of SFG vibrational spectroscopy for catalysis. An additional contribution of this thesis to SFG is the study of the spectro-temporal aspects of SFG emission. SFG spectra containing several bands are modeled in details based on an ODT/Au system and compared to experimental spectra, showing that in SFG spectra are affected by the spectro-temporal shape of the visible laser. The standard deconvolution method used in the literature is only approximate. Accurate spectro-temporal spectrum modeling is required to evaluate precisely the relative intensities when several bands are present.