Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik

O 44: Poster Session II (Semiconductors; Oxides and Insulators: Adsorption, Clean Surfaces, Epitaxy and Growth; Surface Chemical Reactions and Heterogeneous Catalysis; Surface or Interface Magnetism; Solid-Liquid Interfaces; Organic, Polymeric, Biomolecular Films; Particles and Clusters; Methods: Atomic and Electronic Structure; Time-resolved Spectroscopies)

O 44.53: Poster

Wednesday, March 28, 2007, 17:00–19:30, Poster C

Photoinduced catalytic reactions on mars analogous surfaces — •Dominik Schwendt, Burkhard Roos, and Wolfgang Maus-Friedrichs — Institut für Physik und Physikalische Technologien, TU Clausthal, 38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany

Many environmental facts about mars are known through NASA missions. Recently, traces of methane as well as formaldehyde in the marsian atmosphere have been found.

The purpose of this work was to find non-biological explanations for the presence of these gases on mars. Thus we tried to find ways to produce methane and formaldehyde on mars-like surfaces under marsian atmospheric conditions. We used Quadrupole Mass Spectroscopy to detect the gases and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy to analyze the substrate. Our research has shown that formaldehyde emerges on watery hematite in a 6 mbar carbon dioxide atmosphere at temperatures around 260 K. Methane forms as well, if ultraviolet irradiation on the hematite is added to the named conditions.

Consequently with this work we present another possible source for the methane and formaldehyde traces in the marsian atmosphere.