| Citation | Professor King has made a wide range of pioneering contributions to the study of the interaction of gases with metal surfaces.
In the field of kinetics, these include: a molecular beam method for making sticking probability measurements on single crystal surfaces, still the most accurate available; and the development of kinetic models for adsorption, desorption and diffusion (including overlayer order-disorder parameters and labile precursor states) which are widely used.
In surface crystallography and electronic structure his notable contributions include: the first observation, followed by detailed characterization, of a reversible clean surface phase transition (on W{100}); the concept of displacive adsorption, which is proving to be widespread; the use of orthogonal-plane angle-resolved-photoemission to determine molecular orientation; an infinite dilution isotopic mixing method now universally used for measuring the extent of the dipole-coupling contribution to coverage-induced vibrational frequency shifts; and the first multishell structural analyses of chemisorbed overlayers using surface EXAFS.
A strong characteristic of Professor King's work has been the use of a wide range of experimental techniques to study particular well-defined surface problems, where the results are susceptible to fruitful theoretical analysis. |