Enthalpies and Entropies of Adsorption on Well-Defined Oxide Surfaces: Experimental Measurements

The chemistry of oxide surfaces plays a central role in many current technologies, and promises to play an ever-increasing role in future technologies. Because adsorption energies on thin-film oxides have been shown to be strengthened by interactions with the underlying metal when the oxide film is 1 nm thick or thinner, one limits this Review to include only those cases where the oxide films are thicker than 1 nm. Trends in experimental adsorption energies and entropies are revealed and discussed. These energies and entropies will serve as important experimental benchmarks to guide the currently intense worldwide efforts to improve theoretical methods, like density functional theory (DFT) with periodic boundary conditions, with respect to their accuracy at predicting the relative energies of adsorbates on oxide surfaces.