Adsorption dynamics of molecular nitrogen at an Fe(111) surface.

We present an extensive theoretical study of N adsorption mechanisms on an Fe(111) surface. We combine the static analysis of a six-dimensional potential energy surface (6D-PES), based on ab initio density functional theory (DFT) calculations for the system, with quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) calculations to simulate the adsorption dynamics. There are four molecular adsorption states, usually called γ, δ, α, and ε, arising from our DFT calculations. We find that N adsorption in the γ-state is non-activated, while the threshold energy is associated with the entrance channel for the other three adsorption states. Our QCT calculations confirm that there are activated and nonactivated paths …