Activated diatomic species as important reaction intermediates of nanocatalysis

In the present work, evidences are provided that diatomic molecules such as oxygen and nitrogen tend to adsorb molecularly at room temperature on metal nanoclusters. These results imply that the catalytic reactions on nanoclusters are mediated by the formation of activated diatomic molecules instead of the dissociative chemisorption, which generally takes place on metal single crystal surfaces. Our results demonstrate that molecular-level understanding on nanocatalysis can be obtained by means of experimental techniques of cluster science.