The chemisorption of each of the gases oxygen, nitric oxide, and carbon monoxide on a clean, polycrystalline tungsten ribbon is accompanied by a faint luminescence in the visible. This effect is not observed during the chemisorptions of carbon dioxide, hydrogen bromide, hydrogen, or nitrogen. The effect, when it does occur, is a small one, corresponding to photon emission for one out of every 109CO or NO adsorptions and one out of every 107O2adsorptions. The decay of this selfhyphen;excited luminescence does not follow firsthyphen;order kinetics; it persists for many seconds with hyperbolic time dependence. No luminescent behavior is observed during electrochemical adsorption and desorption of oxygen.
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