Kinetics of alkanethiol monolayer desorption from gold in air

Abstract

Thermal desorption of an alkanethiol monolayer from a gold substrate into a gaseous medium under ambient pressure was investigated using XPS and it was found that there exist 2 consecutive 1st order kinetics mechanisms with activation energies of 29.9 and 32.7 kcal mol⁻¹, respectively, i.e. on average ∼15% higher than reports for liquid media desorption.