How to Extract Adsorption Energies, Adsorbate-adsorbate Interaction Parameters, and Saturation Coverages from Temperature Programmed Desorption Experiments

We present a simple scheme to extract the adsorption energy, adsorbate interaction parameter and the saturation coverage from temperature programmed desorption (TPD) experiments. We propose that the coverage dependent adsorption energy can be fit using a functional form including the configurational entropy and linear adsorbate-adsorbate interaction terms. As one example of this scheme, we analyze TPD spectra of desorption on Au(211) and Au(310) surfaces. We determine that under atmospheric pressure, the steps of both facets adsorb between 0.4-0.9 ML coverage of CO*. We show this result to be consistent with density functional theory calculations of adsorption energies with the BEEF-vdW functional.