Investigation of the adsorption of 2‐phenyl‐1‐ethanethiol on silver by Raman spectroscopy

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) of 2-phenyl-l-ethanethiol was investigated in a silver sol. The molecule was found to be chemisorbed dissociatively on the silver surface by rupture of its S-H bond. Although both the tram and gauche conformers around the C -1 4 -2 axis could exist on the surface with submonolayer coverage, the tram conformer seemed to be dominant as the bulk concentration of the molecule was sufficient for full monolayer coverage. In the submonolayer coverage limit, a gradual tram-to-gauche transition was found to occur on the surface with increase in borohydride concentration in the sol solution. The vibrational assignment of the molecule in the liquid phase was also refined by using the SERS data.