Many chemical reactions take place at the gas/solid interface. Examples for gas/surface reactions include the removal of pollutants from car exhausts in catalytic converters, etching processes used in the semiconductor industry (to produce computer chips, for example) and many reactions used to produce chemicals (hydrogenation reactions serve as an example.) The Ceyer Group currently investigates the dynamics of such reactions between molecules and solid surfaces.

Our group specializes in ultra-high vacuum molecular beam scattering techniques to investigate molecule-surface reaction dynamics. A molecular beam is formed by the expansion of a high-pressure gas into vacuum through a small nozzle. The molecules in the beam then hit the sample surface, where a reaction may occur.  The sample is mounted in an ultra-high vacuum chamber to maintain  the surface integrity and to ensure single collision conditions.  Following reaction, molecules adsorbed on the surface are identified through various spectroscopic techniques and scattered reaction products are analyzed with a differentially pumped quadrupole mass spectrometer. Sophisticated measurement setups available in our lab allow us to measure the energy and angular distribution of reaction products that reveal the reaction dynamics.