Rotational Effects in the Dissociative Adsorption Dynamics of Hydrogen on a Pd Surface

We show that the recently observed nonmonotonous dependence of the adsorption probability of H 2 /Pd(111) on the initial rotational state j of the impinging H 2 can be accounted for by considering the two factors- Steering ( Dynamical Reorientation ) and Rotational-Translational Energy Transfer ( Bond-Length Extension ), and the importance of the incidence energy (velocity) of the impinging hydrogen molecule. Furthermore, we show that considerable isotope effects can be observed for the j -dependence of the adsorption probability of hydrogen on Pd.