Abstract. In this contribution, we give examples of results recently obtained in fundamental molecular dynamics studies and DFT electronic structure calculations performed on prototype surface processes due to the interaction of atomic and molecular oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, C on substrates of different nature. The discussed systems are known to be among the most important heterogeneous systems relevant to laboratory and natural gas-surface systems. The surface processes followed in the MD simulations include atom recombination reactions, dissociative chemisorption, adsorption and adsorption/desorption of atoms and molecules. Correlations between the dynamics of the surface processes and the molecular properties of the gas-phase particles and the structural behaviours of the surfaces will be highlighted.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONSThe chemi and physisorption of atoms and molecules on solid surfaces can lead to a large number of chemicophysical processes of great interest in many important research fields both from a fundamental and technological point of view: material science and plasma-chemical processes, aerothermodynamics, interstellar chemistry and others. Among the many possible molecular processes active at surfaces, we mention the direct and indirect inelastic scattering (desorption and adsorption/desorption processes), sticking, chemical reactions, charge transfer and charge neutralization, formation of volatile surface radicals. Each of these processes is active in a specific range of collisional energies according to the behaviours of the surfaces involved in the interaction. The data needed in kinetic modeling of the chemistry at the gas-surface interlayer, as for example in kinetic Monte Carlo simulation, are: state-selected and global recombination coefficients, state-to-state dissociation probabilities, distributions in angles and energies of the scattered particles, energy accommodation coefficient, diffusion coefficients etc. Of key importance is the dependence of the collisional coefficients on the surface parameters ( surface site and surface structure, corrugation, surface contamination), and on the molecular parameters of the gas-phase particles hitting the surface (translational and internal energy content, incident angles). Unfortunately, contrary to gas-phase processes where large database of state-to-state rate constants and cross-sections are available[see for example [1,2], the collisional data for heterogeneous processes needed by the plasma-chemistry and plasma-physics community are rather sparse.In this contribution we focus on two classes of heterogeneous processes: inelastic direct desorption and indirect adsorption-desorption, and molecule formation after atom recombination at surfaces. Special attention is given to the latter reactive process. This reaction can be both an important channel for surface atom abstraction and an effective source of energetically activated molecules. Recombination reactions can follow three basic mechanisms.According to the Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) m...