Such studies provide an in-depth understanding of the nature of the dissociation step and valuable experimental benchmarks for theoretical and computational studies. CO 2 dissociation on Cu surfaces is one such model system that has received extensive attention due to its relevance in the catalytic conversion of CO 2 to methanol. This process has been proposed as one of the strategies to reduce atmospheric CO 2 levels, thereby helping mitigate global warming. While extensive research has been conducted on understanding the interaction of CO 2 with Cu surfaces, a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism and factors influencing dissociation of CO 2 on Cu surfaces is still lacking. On the low-index planes of copper surfaces, CO 2 only adsorbs weakly and has a high activation barrier for dissociation, with Cu(110) being the most active. Nakamura and Campbell have reported the activation energy for dissociation of CO 2 on Cu(110) to be 0.64 eV, with an initial dissociative chemisorption probability (S 0 ) of the order of 10 -9 at room temperature conditions. These studies were performed by exposing a clean Cu(110) single crystal to high pressure (few mbar) CO 2 , and measuring the O-atom coverage (resulting from dissociation) using Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) under ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions. The activation energy was determined by studying the rate of O-atom coverage buildup at different temperatures. Similar conclusions have been reached by a more recent study 8 using near ambient X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (NAXPS) combined with density functional theory (DFT) based modeling. Another study 9 using similar methods (as in the work by Nakamura and Campbell ) reported an activation energy of 0.96 eV for CO 2 dissociation on Cu(100) under high-pressure conditions.