The catalytic decomposition of ammonia has attracted attention due to its high hydrogen storage capacity and the possibility to produce hydrogen without toxic or greenhouse gases as byproducts, making ammonia a potential candidate for fuel cells. The dehydrogenation reaction is thermally activated and thus requires heating or energy input. Ruthenium is one of the most active catalysts and has been the objective of many experimental and theoretical efforts to calculate dissociation and hydrogenation mechanisms. In spite of this there is still no consensus on the adsorption sites and geometries of intermediate species, including NH2 and NH. In this presentation we report scanning tunneling microscopy experiments and density functional theory calculations that unambiguously establish the adsorption sites and the dissociation pathways of ammonia on Ru(0001). All the N-H bond cleavage reactions were induced by controlled tip manipulation to produce each of the NHx (x=0-2) intermediates.

Bonding of ammonia and its dehydrogenated fragments on Ru(0001)

245th National Meeting (2013)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.