3. Chemisorption and catalytic activity

3.1 Adsorption strength and catalytic activity. Sabatier principle

The chemisorption of molecules, and in particular their dissociative chemisorption, reduces the height of the reaction activation barrier and is therefore a key step in heterogeneous catalysis. Correlations between catalytic activity and adsorption properties (notably strength) are therefore expected.

Sabatier's principle helps to rationalize the maximum sometimes obtained in diagrams representing catalytic activity as a function of a variable representative of the stability of...