To many physicists, “surface science” means the study of clean crystalline surfaces under ultrahigh vacuum. That narrowly defined field has yielded some interesting results, such as the reconstruction of the structure of surfaces and the recognition that atomic defects are chemically active sites. But a host of new systems and new phenomena are introduced, with many important applications, by so-called buried interfaces: solid surfaces in contact with gases, liquids, or even other solids. Interfaces between solids and aqueous or other solutions turn up in electrochemistry and in biophysics—many such interfaces are found in the human body.
Of particular interest to the two of us, and a focus of this article, is the catalytic behavior a surface can exhibit when in contact with a gas. A molecule adsorbed onto a surface forms chemical bonds with the surface atoms; those bonds change the electronic structure and arrangements of both the molecule and...
