ELECTRONIC-STRUCTURE OF CYCLOHEXANE ON NI(111)

Mono- and multilayers of cyclohexane adsorbed on a Ni(111) surface have been studied by angle resolved UV photoelectron spectroscopy (ARUPS) using linearly polarized synchrotron radiation, temperature programmed desorption (TPD) and low energy electron diffraction (LEED). Cyclohexane is molecularly adsorbed on Ni(111) at temperatures below 200 K and desorbs without dehydrogenation. Desorption from the first layer exhibits zeroth-order desorption behavior indicative of desorption from two-dimensional islands. The first layer exhibits a well ordered (square-root 7 X square-root 7)R19.1-degrees LEED structure starting at coverages of 0.04 ML up to the saturation coverage of 0.143 ML, also indicative of island formation. For cyclohexane in the first layer the binding energies of the various molecular levels are, apart from an overall shift to smaller values by 0.7 eV, within +/- 0.1 eV identical to those of condensed cyclohexane. This absence of chemical shifts indicate that there is only very weak (if any) chemical interaction between cyclohexane and the Ni(111) surface. From the normal emission ARUPS spectra and symmetry selection rules we conclude that the symmetry of cyclohexane adsorbed on Ni(111) is lower than C3v. This is attributed to a slightly inclined adsorption geometry with intramolecular C3v symmetry of the adsorbed molecules.