ABSTRACT
Selective photocatalytic transformations of chemicals derived from biomass, such as isobutanol, have been long envisioned for a sustainable chemical production. A strong temperature dependence in the reaction selectivity is found for isobutanol photo-oxidation on rutile TiO2(110). The strong temperature dependence is attributed to competition between thermal desorption of the primary photoproduct and secondary photochemical steps. The aldehyde, isobutanal, is the primary photoproduct of isobutanol. At room temperature, isobutanal is obtained selectively from photo-oxidation because of rapid thermal desorption. In contrast, secondary photo-oxidation of isobutanal to propane dominates at lower temperature (240 K) due to the persistence of isobutanal on the surface after it is formed. The byproduct of isobutanal photo-oxidation is CO, which is evolved at higher temperature as a consequence of thermal decomposition of an intermediate, such as formate. The photo-oxidation to isobutanal proceeds after thermally induced isobutoxy formation. These results have strong implications for controlling the selectivity of photochemical processes more generally, in that, selectivity is governed by competition of desorption vs secondary photoreaction of products. This competition can be exploited to design photocatalytic processes to favor specific chemical transformations of organic molecules.
ABSTRACT
According to textbooks, tertiary alcohols are inert towards oxidation. The photocatalysis of tertiary alcohols under highly defined vacuum conditions on a titania single crystal reveals unexpected and new reactions, which can be described as disproportionation into an alkane and the respective ketone. In contrast to primary and secondary alcohols, in tertiary alcohols the absence of an α-H leads to a C-C-bond cleavage instead of the common abstraction of hydrogen. Surprisingly, bonds to methyl groups are not cleaved when the alcohol exhibits longer alkyl chains in the α-position to the hydroxyl group. The presence of platinum loadings not only increases the reaction rate but also opens up a new reaction channel: the formation of molecular hydrogen and a long-chain alkane resulting from recombination of two alkyl moieties. This work demonstrates that new synthetic routes may become possible by introducing photocatalytic reaction steps in which the co-catalysts may also play a decisive role.
ABSTRACT
As the conduction band edge of rutile is close to the reduction potential of hydrogen, there is a long-lasting discussion on whether molecular hydrogen can be evolved from this semiconductor. Our study on methanol photoreforming in the ultra-high vacuum reveals that photocatalysts comprising a TiO2(110) single crystal decorated with platinum clusters indeed enable the evolution of H2. This is attributed to a new type of mechanism, in which the co-catalyst acts as a recombination center for hydrogen and not as a reduction site of a photoreaction. This mechanism is an alternative pathway to the commonly used mechanism derived from photoelectrochemistry and must particularly be considered for systems, in which reducible semiconductors enable the surface diffusion of hydrogen species.
ABSTRACT
The thermal and photochemical mechanistic pathways for tertiary alcohols on the rutile TiO2(110)-surface are studied with the example of tert-butanol. While the thermal reaction is known to yield isobutene, the photochemical ejection of a methyl radical is observed at 100 K. The C-C scission, which is accompanied by the formation of acetone, is the only photochemical reaction pathway at this temperature and can be attributed to the reaction of photoholes that are created upon UV-light illumination at the surface of the n-type semiconductor. At 293 K the selectivity of the reaction changes, as isobutene is additionally formed photochemically. A comparison of the kinetics of the different reactions reveals further insights. Together with the quantitative evaluation of the reaction products at low temperatures and the comparison of the reaction pathways at different temperatures it is demonstrated how thermal effects can influence the selectivity of the reactions in photocatalysis.
