Effects of vibrational and rotational excitations on dissociative chemisorption dynamics of N2 on Fe(111)

Abstract

The dissociative chemisorption of N2 is the rate-limiting step for ammonia synthesis in industry. Here, we investigated the role of initially vibrational excitation and rotational excitation of N2 for its reactivity on the Fe(111) surface, based on a recently developed six-dimensional potential energy surface. Six-dimensional quantum dynamics study was carried out to investigate the effect of vibrational excitation for incidence energy below 1.6 eV, due to significant quantum effects for this reaction. The effects of vibrational and rotational excitations at high incidence energies were revealed by quasiclassical trajectory calculations. We found that raising the translational energy can enhance the dissociation probability to some extent, however, the vibrational excitation or rotational excitation can promote dissociation more efficiently than the same amount of translational energy. This study provides valuable insight into the mode-specific dynamics of this heavy diatom-surface reaction.