Includes index.

This new edition emphasizes the modern concepts of surface chemistry and catalysis uncovered by molecular level studies of surfaces over the past three decades.The opening chapter reviews the nature of various surfaces and interfaces encountered in everyday life, and how the molecular-level knowledge of surfaces can lead to improvement of our modern technologies in energy conversion, chemical and petroleum refinery, environment pollution control, microelectronic devices, micro-electro-mechanical devices, implantation materials, biological detectors and contact lenses. For students, the basic concepts in various properties of surfaces such as structure, thermodynamics, dynamics, electronic properties, and chemical bonds on surfaces are presented in subsequent chapters. Using these basic concepts, the more applied topics such as mechanical properties of surfaces, polymer surfaces and bio-interfaces, and catalysis at surfaces, are discussed in the final three chapters. Some of the questions answered by studying surface chemistry is how steel becomes stainless after adding a small amount of chromium to it or why detergent can remove the oil layer on surfaces. For advanced readers, this book covers recent developments in in-situ surface analysis such as high pressure scanning tunneling microscopy, ambience pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy (SFG). With the advances in nanoparticle synthesis techniques, the size and shape control of nanoparticles have become possible. More and more researchers are focusing on their physical, mechanical, and chemical properties. This book discusses the current understanding of the unique properties of nanoparticles with sizes below 10 nm. Understanding the bio-interfaces is a grand challenge to the surface science community. This book treats this problem as polymer/water interfaces and presents the information obtained from SFG spectroscopy studies.