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.

The book is a multi-author survey (in 15 chapters) of the current state of knowledge and recent developments in our understanding of oxide surfaces. The author list includes most of the acknowledged world experts in this field. The material covered includes fundamental theory and experimental studies of the geometrical, vibrational and electronic structure of such surfaces, but with a special emphasis on the chemical properties and associated reactivity. The main focus is on metal oxides but coverage extends from 'simple' rocksalt materials such as MgO through to complex transition metal oxides with different valencies.

This book presents a comprehensive review of the methods and approaches being adopted to push forward the boundaries of computational catalysis.