On the Durability of Protective Titania Coatings on High-Voltage Spinel Cathodes.

TiO2 -coating of LiNi0.5-x Mn1.5+x O4 (LNMO) by atomic layer deposition (ALD) has been studied as a strategy to stabilize the cathode/electrolyte interface and mitigate transition metal (TM) ion dissolution. The TiO2 coatings were found to be uniform, with thicknesses estimated to 0.2, 0.3, and 0.6 nm for the LNMO powders exposed to 5, 10, and 20 ALD cycles, respectively. While electrochemical characterization in half-cells revealed little to no improvement in the capacity retention neither at 20 nor at 50 °C, improved capacity retention and coulombic efficiencies were demonstrated for the TiO2 -coated LNMO in LNMO||graphite full-cells at 20 °C. This improvement in cycling stability could partly be attributed to thinner cathode electrolyte interphase on the TiO2 -coated samples. Additionally, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy revealed a thinner solid electrolyte interphase on the graphite electrode cycled against TiO2 -coated LNMO, indicating retardation of TM dissolution by the TiO2 -coating.

Towards rational catalyst design: boosting the rapid prediction of transition-metal activity by improved scaling relations.

Understanding the scaling relations of adsorption energies and activation energies greatly facilitates the computational catalyst design. To reduce the computational cost and guarantee efficiency, improved scaling relations were advocated in this study to rapidly acquire the energetics for transition metal surface reactions and further to rapidly and effectively map the activity of transition-metal catalysts. The overall catalytic activity for the surface reactions between C-, H- and O-containing species could be related to their adsorption energies using C, H and O binding energies as descriptors via improved scaling relations. The UBI-QEP (unity bond index-quadratic exponential potential) method, one of the scaling relations used to estimate the adsorption energies from descriptors, was significantly improved by taking into account the changes in the A-B bond indexes during adsorption and the molecular structure of adsorbed species using density functional theory (DFT) data as a benchmark. The improved UBI-QEP approach could satisfactorily predict the DFT (BEEF-vdW) and experimental adsorption energies. DFT calculations with the BEEF-vdW functional were also employed for establishing the BEP (Brønsted-Evans-Polanyi) relationships as scaling relations to correlate the reaction heats with activation energies for C-H, C-O, C-C, and O-H bond cleavages and recombination. The capability of the improved UBI-QEP+BEP approach was tested as a generic framework to map the activity trend for steam methane reforming (a probe reaction) through microkinetic modeling. The results demonstrated that our approach reduces the computational cost by six orders of magnitude while maintaining a reasonable degree of accuracy as compared to the DFT (BEEF-vdW) and experimental approaches.

Geometrical flexibility of platinum nanoclusters: impacts on catalytic decomposition of ethylene glycol.

Catalytic decomposition of ethylene glycol on the Pt13 cluster was studied as a model system for hydrogen production from a lignocellulosic material. Ethylene glycol was chosen as a starting material because of two reasons, it is the smallest oxygenate with a 1 : 1 carbon to oxygen ratio and it contains the C-H, O-H, C-C, and C-O bonds also present in biomass. Density functional theory calculations were employed for predictions of reaction pathways for C-H, O-H, C-C and C-O cleavages, and Brønsted-Evans-Polanyi relationships were established between the final state and the transition state for all mechanisms. The results show that Pt13 catalyzes the cleavage reactions of ethylene glycol more favourably than a Pt surface. The flexibility of Pt13 clusters during the reactions is the key factor in reducing the activation barrier. Overall, the results demonstrate that ethylene glycol and thus biomass can be efficiently converted into hydrogen using platinum nanoclusters as catalysts.

Structural and electronic properties of the Pt(n)-PAH complex (n = 1, 2) from density functional calculations.

A detailed density functional study of the Pt atom and the Pt dimer adsorption on a polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) is presented. The preferred adsorption site for a Pt atom is confirmed to be the bridge site. Upon adsorption of a single Pt atom, however, it is found here that the electronic ground state changes from the triplet state (5d(9)6s(1) configuration) to the closed-shell singlet state (5d(10)6s(0) configuration), which consequently will affect the catalytic activity of Pt when single Pt atoms bind to a carbon surface. The preferred adsorption site for the Pt dimer in the upright configuration is the hollow site. In contrast to the adsorption of a single Pt atom, the formation of a Pt-C bond in the adsorption of a Pt dimer is not accompanied by a change in the spin state, so the most stable electronic state is still the triplet state. While the atomic charge on the Pt atoms and dimers (in parallel configuration) in the Ptn-PAH complex is positive, a negative charge is found on the upper Pt atom for the upright configuration, indicating that single layers of Pt atoms will have a different catalytic activity as compared to Pt clusters on a carbon surface. Comparing the Pt-C bond length and the charge transfer on different sites, the magnitude of the charge transfer decreases with bond elongation, indicating that the catalytic activity of the Pt atom and dimer can be changed by modifying its chemical surroundings. The adsorption energy for the Pt dimer on a PAH surface is larger than that for two individual Pt atoms on the surface indicating that aggregation of Pt atoms on the PAH surface is favorable.