Reactions of singlet (1S and 1D) and triplet (3P) carbon atoms with water, and 1D and 3P carbon atoms with methanol were studied computationally. In the water and methanol systems, the carbon vapor containing a mixture of C(1S), C(1D), and C(3P) atoms, is predicted to react by primarily interacting with the oxygen, OH bond and CH bond of the substrate mainly with the 1D state. While C(1S) was proven to be unreactive C(3P) can hardly be supported to be reactive, and can safely be defined as unreactive. The major product, CO forms as a result of oxygen abstraction, which is observed as a fast, energetically quite favorable process. The scheme of this oxygen abstraction is promising to be applicable to substrates with the general formula R1-O-R2 i.e. water, alcohols, and ethers. OH insertion, both for water and methanol, yields trappable carbenes / the carbene being a key species on the distribution of the end products. Water matrix trapping the carbene opens the path to the formation of formaldehyde / and exhibits a prototype reaction for the formation of dialkoxymethanes. Gas phase product spectrum from the reactions are broader, due to the accessibility of the routes originating from the otherwise trapped intermediates / and the excess energy of the reactions being carried by them. In the condensed phase the very early and rapid reactions seem to have chance, the subsequent rearrangements are hard to occur. The conclusions thus far apply to the reactions in the gas phase as well as in condensed phases involving inert matrices / and the experimental isolation of the species is highly dependent on the ability of the medium to trap the intermediates via effective transfer of excess energy. Due to the large excess energies of intermediates involved, subsequent reactions are fast / of the order 1013 s-1 from kinetic rate calculations. In the absence of efficient transfer of non-fixed energies to the surrounding medium, all of the reaction paths will conclude with irreversible dissociation reactions. Plausible mechanisms for all the experimentally observed products are predicted. The results are in agreement with the available experimental data.

The reactions which give the products ethylene oxide, vinyl alcohol, vinyl aldehyde and vinyl radical for ethylene oxidation and the reactions which give propylene oxide, propanal, acetone and pi-allyl radical for propylene oxidation were investigated by using Density Functional Theory (DFT) method with B3LYP/LanL2DZ and 6-31g(d,p) basis sets in Gaussian&rsquo / 03 software. Silver and silver oxide were used as catalyst surface cluster models. Surface comparison was made for silver (111), (110) and (100) surfaces. Ethylene oxidation reaction was studied on these silver surfaces. Oxygen effect on ethylene oxide formation reaction was also investigated on silver (111) surface. Ethylene and propylene oxidation reactions were completed on both Ag13(111) and Ag14O9(001) surface clusters. VASP software which utilizes periodic plane wave basis sets was also used to compare trends of reactions for ethylene and propylene oxidations obtained by using Gaussian&rsquo / 03 software. According to results, silver (110) surface is more active for ethylene oxide formation than (111) and (100) surfaces. Hill site of (110) surface is much more active than hollow site of (110) surface since oxygen atom weakly adsorbed on hill site. Ethyl aldehyde and vinyl alcohol can not be formed on Ag(111) surface because of those higher activation barriers while ethylene oxide can be formed on cluster. Activation barrier for ethylene oxide formation decreases with increasing oxygen coverage on Ag(111) surface. Ethylene oxametallocycle intermediate molecule was not formed on Ag2O(001) surface while it is formed on surface oxide structure on Ag(111). Ethyl aldehyde and vinyl alcohol are not formed on silver oxide (001) surface. For propylene oxidation, &amp / #928 / -allyl formation path has the lowest activation barrier explaining why silver is not a good catalyst for the propylene oxide formation while it is a good catalyst for the ethylene oxide formation. This situation is valid for silver oxide. Propylene oxide selectivity increased in the gas phase oxidation. The qualitative relative energy trend obtained by VASP software is the similar with that of calculations obtained by using GAUSSIAN&rsquo / 03 software.

Theoretical methods can be used to describe surface chemical reactions in detail and with sufficient accuracy. Advances, especially in density functional theory (DFT) method, enable to compare computational results with experiments. Quantum chemical calculations employing ONIOM DFT/B3LYP/6-31G**-MM/UFF cluster method provided in Gaussian 03 are conducted to investigate water adsorption on rutile (110), and water and ammonia adsorption on anatase (001) surfaces of titanium dioxide. Water and ammonia adsorption on anatase (001) surface is studied by also performing PW:DFT-GGA-PW91 periodic DFT method by using VASP code and the results are compared with the results of ONIOM method. The results obtained by means of ONIOM method indicate that dissociative water adsorption on rutile (110) surface is not favorable due to high activation barrier, whereas on anatase (001) surface, it is favorable since molecular and dissociative water adsorption energies are calculated to be -23.9 kcal/mol and -58.12 kcal/mol. Moreover, on anatase (001) surface, dissociative ammonia adsorption is found energetically more favorable than molecular one (-37.17 kcal/mol vs. -23.28 kcal/mol). Thermodynamic functions at specific experimental temperatures for water and ammonia adsorption reactions on anatase (001) surface are also evaluated. The results obtained using periodic DFT method concerning water adsorption on anatase (001) surface indicate that dissociative adsorption is more favorable than molecular one (-32.28 kcal/mol vs. -14.62 kcal/mol) as in ONIOM method. On the same surface molecular ammonia adsorption energy is computed as -25.44 kcal/mol. The vibration frequencies are also computed for optimized geometries of adsorbed molecules. Finally, computed adsorption energy and vibration frequency values are found comparable with the values reported in literature.

In this study, we have investigated the effect of substrate temperature, use of adhesive layer, deposition rate, annealing and substrate prebaking on the morphology of gold films deposited onto quartz surfaces. For the film growth, physical vapor deposition methods namely electron beam and thermal depositions have been used. Surface morphology of the films have been characterized with atomic force microscopy. Our aim was to confirm the general trends observed for these parameters in our evaporator system for a limited working range in order to produce gold films which are suitable to be used simultaneously for quartz crystal microbalance and helium atom diffraction measurements. At the end of this study, we confirmed the general trends regarding the effect of these parameters stated in literature except annealing process. We obtained a minimum 170 nm2 atomically flat surface with a roughness value smaller than 0.200 nm by thermal deposition method.

High fossil fuel consumption in transportation and industry results in an increase of the emission of green-house gases. To preserve clean air, new strategies are required. The main intention is to decrease the amount of CO2 emission by using lean-burn engines while increasing the combustion efficiency and decreasing the fuel consumption. However, the lean-burn engines have high air-to-fuel ratio which complicates the reduction of the oxides of nitrogen, NOx . The emission of these highly noxious pollutants, NOx , breeds both environmental and health problems. Thus, new catalytic strategies have been steadily developed. One of these strategies is the NOx storage and reduction (NSR) catalysts. Since the reduction of the NOx under excess oxygen condition is very difficult, the NSR catalysts store the NOx until the end of the lean phase that is subsequently alternated with the rich-fuel phase during which the trapped NOx is released and reduced. To develop NSR technology, different storage materials, the coverage of these metals/metal-oxides, support materials, precious metals, temperature, etc. have been widely investigated. In this thesis, the (100) surface of BaO with dopants (K, Na, Ca and La), (100) and (110) surfaces of Li2O, Na2O and K2O are investigated as storage materials. In addition, alkali metal (Li, Na and K) loaded (001) surface of TiO2 (titania) anatase is investigated as a support material for the NOx storage and reduction catalysts. The main aim is to increase the sulfur resistance. The introduction of the dopants on the BaO (100) surface has increased the stability of the NO2 . The combination of local lattice strain and different oxidation state, which is obtained by the La doped BaO (100) surface, benefit both NO2 adsorption performance and sulfur tolerance. The binding energies of NO2 adsorption configurations over the alkali metal oxide (100) and (110) surfaces were higher than the binding energies of SO2 adsorption configurations. The stability of all of NO2 adsorption geometries on the alkali metal-loaded TiO2 (001) surface were higher than the stability of SO2 adsorption geometries. Increasing basicity enhanced the adsorption of NO2 molecule.

Thermodynamic stabilities of eighteen cyclic C5H6 isomers were explored computationally both on singlet and triplet state potential energy surfaces (PES). All isomers have singlet ground states except for bicyclo[2.1.0]pent-5-ylidene (B5) having no stable geometry on the singlet C5H6 PES. Cyclopenta-1,3-diene (M1) is the most stable cyclic C5H6 isomer while cyclopent-1,4-diylidene is the least stable one among all. Cyclopenta-1,2-diene (M2) and cyclopentyne (M3) have biradical characters of 46.9 and 21.5%, respectively. Seven unimolecular isomerization reactions occurring among several of these molecules were investigated by DFT and ab initio methods. The conversion of bicyclo[2.1.0]pent-2-ene (B1) and tricyclo[2.1.0.02,5]-pentane (T1) into 1,3-cyclopentadiene (M1) are shown to be concerted processes whose reaction paths pass through TSs with a high degree of biradical character. The reaction enthalpies (DH0) are predicted to be -47.7 kcal/mol for B1 and -63.8 kcal/mol for T1 at UB3LYP/6-31G(d) level. The activation enthalpy (DH0&sup1 / ) for the ring opening of B1 was calculated by the CR-CCSD(T) method to be 25.2 kcal/mol, in good agreement with experiment. Furthermore, the DH0&sup1 / for the ring opening of T1 was obtained by the CR-CCSD(T) method to be 48.2 kcal/mol. The self-conversion of M1 via 1,5-hydrogen shift is a facile and concerted reaction with aromatic TS. The DH0&sup1 / estimations of B3LYP and CC methods are 25.24 and 28.78 kcal/mol, respectively. For 1,2-hydrogen shift reactions of cyclopent-3-enylidene (M4) and cyclopenten-2-ylidene (M5), the single point CC calculations predicted the DH0&sup1 / values of 3.13 and 10.12 kcal/mol, as well as, the DH0 values of -71.28 and -64.05 kcal/mol, respectively. The reason of M5 being more stable than M4 is due to the conjugation of the carbene carbon and the double bond in M5. The reaction path of cyclobutylidene methylene to cyclopentyne rearrangement is found to be rather shallow. The DH0&sup1 / and DH0 values predicted by the RCCSD(T) method to be 3.65 and -5.72 kcal/mol, respectively. Finally, triplet state isomerization of bicyclo[2.1.0]pent-5-ylidene to cyclopenta-1,2-diene, as well as, its parent reaction, cyclopropylidene to 1,2-propadiene were investigated at several levels of theory including DFT, CASSCF and CC methods. The UCCSD(T) method estimated a moderate barrier whose value is 8.12 kcal/mol for the isomerization of 3B5 with the reaction enthalpy of -44.63 kcal/mol.