Kinetics of alkanethiol monolayer desorption from gold in air

Thermal desorption of an alkanethiol monolayer from a gold substrate into a gaseous medium under ambient pressure was investigated using XPS and it was found that there exist 2 consecutive 1st order kinetics mechanisms with activation energies of 29.9 and 32.7 kcal mol^–1, respectively, i.e. on average ~15% higher than reports for liquid media desorption.