Ian R. Harkness and Richard M. Lambert
The adsorption of NO on a sodium-precovered Pt{111} single crystal has been studied by temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) and the resulting sodium species characterised by Na KL2,3L2,31D X-ray excited Auger electron spectroscopy (XAES). Sodium strengthens the adsorption of NO and promotes its dissociation. At sufficiently high sodium coverages, all the adsorbed NO is dissociated and N2 is the only nitrogen-containing desorption product: no N2O is observed. Na-promoted NO does not react with Oa to form a surface nitrite. Differences between these results and previous work on K/Pt{111} prompted investigation of the effect of NO2 impurity in the dosing gas. It was found that this could account for the observed differences. The surface sodium nitrite formed by NO2 dosing was shown by XAES to be agglomerated and gave rise to a signal at 990.0 eV compared to 994.8 eV for clean sodium and 993.0 eV for sodium in the presence of NO.