title: CO oxidation on electrically charged gold nanotips.
abstract: We report a study of the oxidation of CO on a gold nanotip in the presence of high electrostatic fields. With the binding energies obtained using density functional theory as a function of the electric field, a simple field-dependent kinetic model based on the Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism is set up. We show that the dissociative adsorption of oxygen on gold happens only below a negative critical value of the electric field while the binding of CO on gold is enhanced for positive values. We explain the propagation of a wave observed in field ion microscopy experiments and predict that the oxidation of CO occurs on negatively charged gold clusters.
authors.affiliation: Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Code Postal 231, Campus Plaine, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium. jmcewen@ulb.ac.be
authors.forename: J-S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: McEwen
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gaspard