Thermal chemistry of hydrazine on clean and oxygen- and water-predosed Cu(110) single-crystal surfaces

Abstract The chemistry of hydrazine on Cu(110) single-crystal surfaces was probed under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions by temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Survey TPD experiments identified molecular nitrogen and ammonia as the main desorbing products from thermal activation of the adsorbate, but small amounts of diazene and NH 2 · radicals were also detected. At saturation coverage, N 2 production leads NH 3 desorption by approximately 10 K (with TPD peaks at 350 K versus 360 K, respectively), indicating a preference for dehydrogenation over N–N bond scission steps, and additional nitrogen was seen at even lower temperatures (320 K) in experiments starting with even higher doses of hydrazine. On the other hand, the formation of NH 3 and NH 2 ·, which desorb in a wide range of temperatures between approximately 300 K and 700 K, dominates in experiments with low N 2 H 4 doses, presumably because a stronger interaction of the N–N bond with the metal in the flat adsorption geometry expected at such low coverages. Dosing at room temperature seems to also facilitate the dissociative adsorption, albeit via dehydrogenation steps that lead to the subsequent production of more significant amounts of diazene and of molecular hydrogen (in addition to N 2 , NH 3 , and NH 2 ·). Preadsorption of oxygen on the Cu(110) surface helps stabilize the hydrazine, increasing its desorption temperature and helping with the low-temperature (320 K) production of N 2 . Coadsorption of hydrazine with water leads to facile proton exchange, as indicated by the production of NH 2 D in TPD experiments with N 2 H 4  + D 2 O. This isotope scrambling must occur at cryogenic temperatures because all water desorbs from the surface below 200 K and no other changes in surface chemistry are observed after that. The implications of all this chemistry to practical applications that may use hydrazine in surface reactions with copper, including its use as a reducing agent in atomic layer deposition (ALD) processes, are discussed.