Imagine that a young physicist would approach a granting agen­ cy and propose to contribute to heterogeneous catalysis by studying the heat conductivity of gases in contact with a hot filament. How would he be received now? How would he have been treated sixty years ago ? Yet, more than sixty years ago, Irving Langmuir, through his study of heat transfer from a tungsten filament, uncovered most of the fundamental ideas which are used to-day by the scientific com­ munity in pure and applied heterogeneous catalysis. Through his work with what were for the first time "clean" metal surfaces, Langmuir formulated during a period of a little over ten years un­ til the early thirties, the concepts of chemisorption, monolayer, adsorption sites, adsorption isotherm, sticking probability, cata­ lytic mechanisms by way of the interaction between chemisorbed spe­ cies, behavior of non-uniform surfaces and repulsion between adsor­ bed dipoles. It is fair to say that many of these ideas constituting the first revolution in surface chemistry have since been refined through thousands of investigations. Countless papers have been pu­ blished on the subject of the Langmuir adsorption isotherm, the Langmuir catalytic kinetics and the Langmuir site-exclusion adsorp­ tion kinetics. The refinements have been significant. ThE original concepts in their primitive or amended form are used everyday by catalytic chemists and chemical engineers allover the world in their treatment of experimental data, design of reactors or inven­ tion of new processes.

Inhalt

I - General Introduction to Phenomenological Models and Theory of Clean and Chemisorbed Surfaces.- to Phenomenological Models and Atomistic Concepts of Clean and Chemisorbed Surfaces.- Introductory Lecture: Survey of Current Ideas in the Theory of Chemisorption by Metals.- II - Theoretical Physics and Quantum Chemistry Approaches to the Electronic Structure and Reactivity of Metal Surfaces.- Electronic Structure of Transition Metal Surfaces.- Density-Functional Approach to the Electronic Structure of Metal Surfaces and Metal-Adatom Systems.- Chemisorption Theory, Electronic Structure, and Reactivity of Metal Surfaces.- III - Theoretical and Experimental Aspects of Physical Techniques for the Investigation of the Metal-Gas Interface.- Electronic Properties of Clean and Chemisorbed Metal Surfaces.- Approach to Two Prototype Metal Adsorption Systems.- Atomic Structure and Thermodynamics of Pure and Two-Component Metal Surfaces.- Theory of L.E.E.D..- Applications of LEED to the Determination of Surface Structures on Metals.- Electron Spectroscopy of Surfaces via Field and Photoemission.- Electron Spectroscopy for the Investigation of Metallic Surfaces and Adsorbed Species.- S.I.M.S. Studies at Metal Surfaces.- IV - Reactivity and Catalytic Activity of Metal Surfaces.- Field-Ion-Mass-Spectrometry Investigating Electronic Structure and Reactivity of Surfaces.- Spectroscopic Studies of Supported Metal Catalysts: Electron and Ferromagnetic Resonance and Infrared Spectroscopy.- Small Metal Particles: A Bridge Between Theory and Practice.- Catalysis by Supported and Unsupported Metals and Alloys.- List of Short Communications.- List of Participants.