Advances in Catalysis

Book excerpt: Surface science emerged in the 1960s with the development of reliable ultrahigh vacuum apparatus, providing exact structures of surfaces of metal single crystals, information about their compositions, and relationships between surface structure and composition and catalytic reaction rates. Catalysis, the acceleration of a chemical reaction by a catalyst (substance), provided much of the driving force for the early development of surface science. As surface science continues its rapid development, this book illustrates how it is still driven by the challenges of catalysis and how both theory and scanning tunneling microscopy have forcefully emerged as essential tools. It is also evident how surface science continues to serve as the foundation of catalytic science. This is a compendium written by leading surface scientists presenting an incisive assessment of up-to-date theoretical and experimental results constituting the foundation of fundamental understanding of surface catalysis. This paperback.