The catalytic conversion of environmentally hazardous pollutants in automobile exhausts is one of the most thoroughly studied problems in heterogeneous catalysis. Three-way catalysts (TWC) are used to remove the major pollutants in the exhaust gases by the simultaneous reduction of NO x and the oxidation of CO and unburned hydrocarbons. Recently, Pd-based catalysts have been considered as an alternative to the more commonly used Pt/Rhbased catalysts. 1,2 In this study vibrational spectroscopy is used to examine the in situ adsorption of CO + NO to form CO 2 , N 2 O and N 2 on a Pd(111) model catalyst under high-pressure conditions. We employ polarization-modulation infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (PM-IRAS), [3][4][5] an adaption of the well-known IRAS technique. The surface sensitivity of PM-IRAS relies on the fact that IR absorption by an adsorbed species on a metal surface shows a strong dependence on the polarization of the incoming IR beam, while gas-phase species are isotropic with respect to the polarization. Figure 1 shows PM-IRA spectra of Pd(111) in the presence of a 240 mbar CO + NO mixture within the temperature range 300-600 K (CO:NO ) 3:2). The spectra were obtained by increasing the CO + NO gas mixture pressure at T surface ) 300 K until an equilibrium pressure of 240 mbar was established. The data were acquired in the presence of 240 mbar of ambient pressure at the given temperatures. The spectrum at 350 K shows a feature at 1922 cm -1 , which corresponds to CO residing on either two-fold or threefold Pd sites. [6][7][8][9][10] The feature at 1876 cm -1 can be assigned to CO located on the three-fold sites 7,[8][9][10] while the peak at 1745 cm -1 is assigned to NO bound to atop sites. 11 At 350 K, atop sites are predominantly occupied by NO whereas three-fold sites are occupied by CO and possibly NO (considering the broad band at approximately 1550 cm -1 ). Interestingly, at 600 K and under reaction conditions, the spectrum is dominated by a new band at 2255 cm -1 besides the CO-related feature at 1908 cm -1 . The feature at 2255 cm -1 is assigned to the asymmetric stretching mode of an isocyanate (-NCO) species. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] Once produced at high temperatures (500-625 K), this species is stable within the 300-625 K temperature range as well as after reducing the chamber pressure to 1 × 10 -7 mbar at room temperature. In previous infrared studies on Pd/Al 2 O 3 16,17 a broad band near 2242 cm -1 has been observed and assigned to a substrate-bound isocyanate species. According to these previous studies, the formation of isocyanate takes place on metal sites followed by spillover to the substrate. Although a metal-bound isocyanate species was not reported for the Pd/Al 2 O 3 system, 16 isocyanate formation in the CO + NO reaction on Pd(111) was postulated in a recent theoretical study. 20 To explore the conditions under which the metal-bound isocyanate species is formed on Pd(111), experiments with different total pressures were conducted (see Figure 2). At 10 -4...