A spectroscopic study of adsorbed CO on Ni(111) was carried out using infra
red-visible sum-frequency generation (SFG) and infrared reflection absorpti
on spectroscopy (IRAS). An anomalous coverage-dependence of the SFC signal
intensities of bridged and linear CO was found. While the SFG signal of bri
dged CO at 1920 cm(-1) gained intensity with increasing CO coverage in the
region between 0 and 0.4 ML (1 monolayer, ML: saturation coverage at 130 K)
, it weakened and disappeared when linear CO (2074 cm(-1)) was present on t
he surface above 0.47 ML. The IRA peak of bridged CO, however, did not disa
ppear at the increased coverage suggesting that the weakening of the SFG si
gnal of bridged CO is not caused by the decrease in the coverage but by the
suppression of the SFG process of bridged CO by the coexistence of linear
CO. The spectra of isotope mixtures of (CO)-O-16 and (CO)-O-18 clearly indi
cated that the weakening of SFG signals is not caused by the dipole-dipole
coupling between the vibrational modes of bridged and linear CO. The anomal
ous coverage-dependence of the SFG signal was ascribed to the change of the
Raman tensor by the coadsorption of linear CO. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B
.V. All rights reserved.