A theoretical study of the dissociation of H2/Cu

We present calculations for the dissociative adsorption of hydrogen molecules on a Cu surface as a function of initial translational energy and vibrational quantum state. Classical, semiclassical, and fully quantum calculations are performed and the results compared. The potential energy surface was based upon a total energy calculation for H2 on a small Cu cluster and has been previously employed in dynamical simulations. Our results show that for low primary beam energies, dissociation occurs primarily via tunneling through the activation barrier in the vibrational coordinate. Populating the initial vibrational states is shown to enhance reactivity, but not simply by a total energy shift. By changing the hydrogen isotope it is shown that tunneling effects can persist up to quite high molecular masses. This occurs because the activation barrier lies in the vibrational coordinate, where the reduced mass of the molecule determines the dynamics.