The ultimate goal of any branch of chemistry, including surface chemistry, is to
understand the dynamics of reactions. The typical time scale for bond making and
breaking is the femtosecond time scale. Femtochemistry has led to enormous progress
in the understanding, and even control, of chemical reactions in the gas and solution
phases over the past decades. However, a comparable level of sophistication in the
analysis of surface chemical reactions has not been achieved due to the complexity of
the energy dissipation channels. For this thesis, a new experimental set-up was built
with the goal to monitor the femtosecond laser-induced desorption (fs-LID) and
femtosecond laser-induced reaction (fs-LIR) of CO and NO co-adsorbed on a Pd(111)
surface. In addition, a femtosecond extreme ultraviolet (XUV) source was designed and
commissioned. All the femtosecond laser-induced studies were accompanied by
temperature programmed desorption (TPD) and reflection absorption infrared
spectroscopy (RAIRS). First, fs-LID experiments were performed for pure CO and NO
adsorbed on Pd(111) in order to test the apparatus. The CO and NO photodesorption
dynamics were compared and the different photoreactivity was explained qualitatively
using two theoretical models: electron friction and desorption induced by multiple
electronic transitions (DIMET). The power law behaviour was also tested and a new
method of fitting proposed. The photodesorption behaviour of CO co-adsorbed with NO
on Pd(111) was then studied and compared qualitatively with the photodesorption
behaviour of pure CO and NO within the empirical friction model
