Coverage- and Facet-Dependent Multiscale Modeling of O* and H* Adsorption on Pt Catalytic Nanoparticles.

Within computational heterogeneous catalysis, two critical factors exist-coverage and multifaceted effects-which are challenging to incorporate and contribute to differences between the results obtained from computational and experimental studies. Such disparities exist when significant adsorbate-adsorbate interactions are present, particularly when coupled with computationally limited facet sampling. Here, we designed a study to demonstrate the significance of coverage and facet effects on the predicted coverages for O* and H* on Pt nanoparticles. This is accomplished by employing multiscale modeling techniques using a three-pronged approach consisting of density functional theory (DFT), ab initio phase diagrams, and mean-field microkinetic models. Overall, adsorbate-adsorbate interactions are repulsive and far stronger for O*/Pt than for H*/Pt. For O* on Pt(111), repulsive interactions are both two- and three-body, but on Pt(100) and Pt(110), they are predominantly three-body. Through benchmarks to existing experimental literature, we demonstrate that experimentally observed coverages and desorption temperatures can be accurately estimated by computational models when the adsorbate-adsorbate interactions are included. Finally, by combining microkinetic models at the equilibrium limit with kubic harmonic interpolation, we model the impacts of the treatment of adsorbate-adsorbate interactions on the predicted O* and H* coverages over multifaceted Pt nanoparticles. Omitting adsorbate-adsorbate interactions over Pt nanoparticles leads to an overestimation of equilibrium coverages of the adsorbates (maximum of 0.29 and 0.11 ML for O* and H*, respectively) across a wide range of temperatures and pressures relevant to heterogeneous catalysis. Altogether, our work demonstrates that the inclusion of coverage and facet effects increases the accuracy of computational models for heterogeneous catalysts.

Capturing the Coverage Dependence of Aromatics' Adsorption through Mean-Field Models.

To capture the dominant interactions (surface-mediated and through-space) in catalytic hydrodeoxygenation systems, coverage-dependent mean-field models of aromatic adsorption are developed on Pt(111) and Ru(0001). We derive three key insights from this work: (1) we can universally apply mean-field models to capture the coverage-dependent behavior of oxygenated aromatics on transition-metal surfaces, (2) we can deconvolute surface-mediated and through-space interactions from the mean-field model, and (3) we can develop relatively accurate models that predict the adsorption energy of aromatics on transition-metal surfaces for the full coverage range using the work function at the lowest modeled coverage. Our approach enables the rapid prediction of the coverage-dependent behavior of oxygenated aromatics on transition-metal surfaces, reducing the computational cost associated with these studies by an order of magnitude.

Guiding the design of oxidation-resistant Fe-based single atom alloy catalysts with insights from configurational space.

The high activity and selectivity of Fe-based heterogeneous catalysts toward a variety of reactions that require the breaking of strong bonds are offset in large part by their considerable instability with respect to oxidative deactivation. While it has been shown that the stability of Fe catalysts is considerably enhanced by alloying them with precious metals (even at the single-atom limit), rational design criteria for choosing such secondary metals are still missing. Since oxidative deactivation occurs due to the strong binding of oxygen to Fe and reduction by adsorbed hydrogen mitigates the deactivation, we propose here to use the binding affinity of oxygen and hydrogen adatoms as the basis for rational design. As it would also be beneficial to use cheaper secondary metals, we have scanned over a large subset of 3d-5d mid-to-late transition metal single atoms and computationally determined their effect on the oxygen and hydrogen adlayer binding as a function of chemical potential and adsorbate coverage. We further determine the underlying chemical origins that are responsible for these effects and connect them to experimentally tunable quantities. Our results reveal a reliable periodic trend wherein oxygen binding is weakened greatest as one moves right and down the periodic table. Hydrogen binding shows the same trend only at high (but relevant) coverages and otherwise tends to have its binding slightly increased in all systems. Trends with secondary metal coverage are also uncovered and connected to experimentally tunable parameters.

Characterizing the geometric and electronic structure of defects in the "29" copper surface oxide.

The geometric and electronic structural characterization of thin film metal oxides is of fundamental importance to many fields such as catalysis, photovoltaics, and electrochemistry. Surface defects are also well known to impact a material's performance in any such applications. Here, we focus on the "29" oxide Cu2O/Cu(111) surface and we observe two common structural defects which we characterize using scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy and density functional theory. The defects are proposed to be O vacancies and Cu adatoms, which both show unique topographic and spectroscopic signatures. The spatially resolved electronic and charge state effects of the defects are investigated, and implications for their reactivity are given.

Density functional theory studies of methyl dissociation on a Ni(111) surface in the presence of an external electric field.

To provide a basis for understanding the reactive processes on nickel surfaces at fuel cell anodes, we investigate the influence of an external electric field on the dehydrogenation of methyl species on a Ni(111) surface using density functional theory calculations. The structures, adsorption energies and reaction barriers for all methyl species dissociation on the Ni(111) surface are identified. Our results show that the presence of an external electric field does not affect the structures and favorable adsorption sites of the adsorbed species, but causes the adsorption energies of the CHx species at the stable site to fluctuate around 0.2 eV. Calculations give an energy barrier of 0.692 eV for CH3* → CH2* + H*, 0.323 eV for CH2* → CH* + H* and 1.373 eV for CH* → C* + H*. Finally, we conclude that the presence of a large positive electric field significantly increases the energy barrier of the CH* → C* + H* reaction more than the other two reactions, suggesting that the presence of pure C atoms on Ni(111) are impeded in the presence of an external positive electric field.

Integrated X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and DFT characterization of benzene adsorption on Pt(111), Pt(355) and Pt(322) surfaces.

We systematically investigate the adsorption of benzene on Pt(111), Pt(355) and Pt(322) surfaces by high-resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and first-principle calculations based on density functional theory (DFT), including van der Waals corrections. By comparing the adsorption energies at 1/9, 1/16 and 1/25 ML on Pt(111), we find significant lateral interactions exist between the benzene molecules at 1/9 ML. The adsorption behavior on Pt(355) and Pt(322) is very different. While on Pt(355) a step species is clearly identified in the C 1s spectra at low coverages followed by occupation of a terrace species at high coverages, no evidence for a step species is found on Pt(322). These different adsorption sites are confirmed by extensive DFT calculations, where the most favorable adsorption configurations on Pt(355) and Pt(322) are also found to vary: a highly distorted across the step molecule is found on Pt(355) while a less distorted configuration adjacent to the step molecule is deduced for Pt(322). The theoretically proposed C 1s core level binding energy shifts between these most favorable configurations and the terrace species are found to correlate well with experiment: for Pt(355), two adsorbate states are found, separated by ~0.4 eV in XPS and 0.3 eV in the calculations, in contrast to only one state on Pt(322).