Surface femtochemistry

A challenging task in surface science is to unravel the dynamics of molecules on surfaces associated with, for example, surface molecular motion and (bimolecular) reactions. As these processes typically take place on emtosecond time scales, ultrafast lasers must be used in these studies. We demonstrate two complementary approaches to study these ultrafast molecular dynamics at metal surfaces. In the first, the molecules are studied after desorbing from the surface initiated by a laser pulse using the so called time-of-flight technique. In the second approach, molecules are studied in real time during their diffusion over the surface by using surface-specific pump-probe spectroscopy.

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