Does C-C bonding proceed during exposure of adequate metal surfaces to CH{sub 4}? Reply to {open_quotes}Comment by Z. Hlavathy, Z. Paal, and P. Tetenyi{close_quotes}

The comments, results, and reflections presented by Hlavathy and co-workers in their Letter aim at demonstrating that C-C bonding between CH{sub x} adspecies, formed upon exposure of Pt to CH{sub 4}, can proceed as well during the exposure itself as during further exposure to H{sub 2}. This possibility was implicitly put forward because they thought that a tight parallelism exists between the interactions of CH{sub 4} and CO with a metal surface, provided that the exposure to CH{sub 4} is carried out at a high enough temperature (450{degrees}C). In both cases these authors assumed that three kinds of carbon, C{sub {alpha}}, C{sub {beta}}, and C{sub {gamma}}, can be formed, C{sub {alpha}} being the main species responsible for the production of CH{sub 4} and of the C{sub 2}, alkanes obtained when the metal was further contacted with H{sub 2} at 100{degrees}C. As they argued that C{sub {alpha}} (also named carbidic carbon) has only metal atoms in its first coordination shell, they were implicitly led it that C-C bonding must take place during the hydrogenation step. The authors have not denied this possibility, but they have suggested that different situations can result from exposures to CH{sub 4} conducted at temperatures much lowermore » than those used by Koerts et al.. 13 refs.« less