Many of the technological challenges currently faced by society involve understanding and modifying the interaction of molecules with the surfaces of nanomaterials. Often times these issues involve familiar topics such as gas separation, lubrication and energy conversion, storage or generation. Although neutron scattering is widely viewed as a highly penetrative probe of bulk materials, both elastic and inelastic scattering methods can be effectively employed to examine the structure and dynamics of molecular interactions with nanometer scale materials. In this presentation we will demonstrate that by employing a research regime that includes novel material synthesis, adsorption thermodynamics, and computational modeling an attractive opportunity exists for observing and understanding the behavior of single and multilayer molecular adsorption on pure and metal decorated surfaces. Selected examples of these investigations will be discussed. Among them are: [1] the structure and wetting properties of normal and cyclic alkane films on MgO, graphite and h-BN, [2] the structure and dynamics of methane and hydrogenadsorbed on MgO [3] spillover of hydrogen interacting with Pd decorated ZnO.  The advent of new, high-intensity, pulsed sources such as SNS in the US and ESS in Lund presents exciting possibilities for new discoveries in molecule-surface interactions and advanced materials. <br/>

Neutron scattering investigations of molecular interactions with surfaces of nanomaterials

2019 Fall National Meeting

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