Lecture

Van Marum Colloquium - Probing the surface chemistry of water and carbon dioxide with qPlus-STM/AFM

• Jing Guo

Date

Tuesday 30 January 2024

Time

10:30 - 11:30

Location

Gorlaeus Building
Einsteinweg 55
2333 CC Leiden

Room

DM.0.13

Abstract

In this talk, I will introduce the development of qPlus-based scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), which allows to identify the positions of proton and the OH directionality in water in real space [1,2]. Then I will showcase the applications of H-sensitive STM/AFM in the studies of surface water and carbon dioxide. 1) Bilayer hexagonal ice is regarded as the first intrinsic 2D ice crystal, which is robust against surface symmetry and corrugation [3]. Doping hydrogen atoms in such bilayer ice would result in the formation of hydronium-water monolayer on metal surfaces. The atomic structures of Eigen- and Zundel- type hydrated protons are directly visualized by qPlus-AFM [4]. More interestingly, hydroniums could also be generated due to the proton transfer from formic acid (FA) to water on Cu(111) surface, which directly promotes the production of hydrogen from FA [5]. 2) Recently, using qPlus-AFM we visualized how the alkali metal cations on copper promote the activation and reaction of CO2 and revealed the reaction mechanism of CO2 on different faces of copper crystals.
 

1. Science 352, 321-325 (2016)
2. Nature. Communications. 9, 112 (2018)
3. Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 046001 (2022)
4. Science 377, 315-319 (2022)
5. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 146, 210–217 (2024)