The interaction of atomic hydrogen with clean and deuterium precovered Ru(10 (1) over bar0) was studied by means of temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) spectroscopy. Compared to molecular hydrogen experiments, after exposure of the clean surface to gas-phase atomic hydrogen at 90 K, two additional peaks grow in the desorption spectra at 115 and 150 K. The surface saturation coverage, determined by equilibrium between abstraction and adsorption reactions, is 2.5 monolayers. Preadsorbed deuterium abstraction experiments with gas-phase atomic hydrogen show that a pure Eley-Rideal mechanism is not involved in the process, while a hot atom (HA) kinetics describes well the reaction. By least-squares fitting of the experimental data, a simplified HA kinetic model yields an abstraction cross section value of 0.5 +/- 0.2 Angstrom(2). The atomic hydrogen interaction with an oxygen precovered surface was also studied by means of both TPD and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy: oxygen hydrogenation and water production take place already at very low temperature (90 K). (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.