Nondissociative chemisorption of methanethiol on Ag(110): a critical result for self-assembled monolayers.

Three definitive experiments have been performed to investigate the possibility of dissociative adsorption of methanethiol (CH3SH) on clean Ag(110). On the clean Ag(110) surface, the adsorption in the first layer occurs to 0.5 ML, producing a (2 x 1) low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) structure. The undissociated molecule desorbs starting at approximately 140 K, and only tiny quantities of other gaseous products are desorbed, and only tiny quantities of S-containing species remain. Using a 50:50% mixture of CH3SD and CD3SH, we find no evidence of S-H or S-D bond scission between these molecules upon desorption. And finally, when the CH3SH molecule is incident on the clean Ag(110) surface in the temperature range of 230-400 K, less than 1% of the incident molecules dissociate to produce adsorbed sulfur-containing species. The results influence our thinking about the surface bonding of alkanethiol-based self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on noble metals.