Engineering the Active Sites of Graphene Catalyst: From CO2 Activation to Activate Li-CO2 Batteries

ACS Nano ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biao Chen ◽  
Dashuai Wang ◽  
Biao Zhang ◽  
Xiongwei Zhong ◽  
Yingqi Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 3265
Author(s):  
Ubong J. Etim ◽  
Chenchen Zhang ◽  
Ziyi Zhong

Utilizing CO2 as a sustainable carbon source to form valuable products requires activating it by active sites on catalyst surfaces. These active sites are usually in or below the nanometer scale. Some metals and metal oxides can catalyze the CO2 transformation reactions. On metal oxide-based catalysts, CO2 transformations are promoted significantly in the presence of surface oxygen vacancies or surface defect sites. Electrons transferable to the neutral CO2 molecule can be enriched on oxygen vacancies, which can also act as CO2 adsorption sites. CO2 activation is also possible without necessarily transferring electrons by tailoring catalytic sites that promote interactions at an appropriate energy level alignment of the catalyst and CO2 molecule. This review discusses CO2 activation on various catalysts, particularly the impacts of various structural factors, such as oxygen vacancies, on CO2 activation.


Catalysts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Nelson Y. Dzade ◽  
Nora H. de Leeuw

As a promising material for heterogeneous catalytic applications, layered iron (II) monosulfide (FeS) contains active edges and an inert basal (001) plane. Activating the basal (001) plane could improve the catalytic performance of the FeS material towards CO2 activation and reduction reactions. Herein, we report dispersion-corrected density functional theory (DFT-D3) calculations of the adsorption of CO2 and the elementary steps involved in its reduction through the reverse water-gas shift reaction on a defective FeS (001) surface containing sulfur vacancies. The exposed Fe sites resulting from the creation of sulfur vacancies are shown to act as highly active sites for CO2 activation and reduction. Based on the calculated adsorption energies, we show that the CO2 molecules will outcompete H2O and H2 molecules for the exposed active Fe sites if all three molecules are present on or near the surface. The CO2 molecule is found to weakly physisorb (−0.20 eV) compared to the sulfur-deficient (001) surface where it adsorbs much strongly, releasing adsorption energy of −1.78 and −1.83 eV at the defective FeS (001) surface containing a single and double sulfur vacancy, respectively. The CO2 molecule gained significant charge from the interacting surface Fe ions at the defective surface upon adsorption, which resulted in activation of the C–O bonds confirmed via vibrational frequency analyses. The reaction and activation energy barriers of the elementary steps involved in the CO2 hydrogenation reactions to form CO and H2O species are also unraveled.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (19) ◽  
pp. 11108-11115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juntian Niu ◽  
Jingyu Ran ◽  
Wenjie Qi ◽  
Zhiliang Ou ◽  
Wei He

Author(s):  
Alexis T. Bell

Heterogeneous catalysts, used in industry for the production of fuels and chemicals, are microporous solids characterized by a high internal surface area. The catalyticly active sites may occur at the surface of the bulk solid or of small crystallites deposited on a porous support. An example of the former case would be a zeolite, and of the latter, a supported metal catalyst. Since the activity and selectivity of a catalyst are known to be a function of surface composition and structure, it is highly desirable to characterize catalyst surfaces with atomic scale resolution. Where the active phase is dispersed on a support, it is also important to know the dispersion of the deposited phase, as well as its structural and compositional uniformity, the latter characteristics being particularly important in the case of multicomponent catalysts. Knowledge of the pore size and shape is also important, since these can influence the transport of reactants and products through a catalyst and the dynamics of catalyst deactivation.


Author(s):  
C. Jacobsen ◽  
J. Fu ◽  
S. Mayer ◽  
Y. Wang ◽  
S. Williams

In scanning luminescence x-ray microscopy (SLXM), a high resolution x-ray probe is used to excite visible light emission (see Figs. 1 and 2). The technique has been developed with a goal of localizing dye-tagged biochemically active sites and structures at 50 nm resolution in thick, hydrated biological specimens. Following our initial efforts, Moronne et al. have begun to develop probes based on biotinylated terbium; we report here our progress towards using microspheres for tagging.Our initial experiments with microspheres were based on commercially-available carboxyl latex spheres which emitted ~ 5 visible light photons per x-ray absorbed, and which showed good resistance to bleaching under x-ray irradiation. Other work (such as that by Guo et al.) has shown that such spheres can be used for a variety of specific labelling applications. Our first efforts have been aimed at labelling ƒ actin in Chinese hamster ovarian (CHO) cells. By using a detergent/fixative protocol to load spheres into cells with permeabilized membranes and preserved morphology, we have succeeded in using commercial dye-loaded, spreptavidin-coated 0.03μm polystyrene spheres linked to biotin phalloidon to label f actin (see Fig. 3).


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 811-821 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhao-Meng Wang ◽  
Li-Juan Liu ◽  
Bo Xiang ◽  
Yue Wang ◽  
Ya-Jing Lyu ◽  
...  

The catalytic activity decreases as –(SiO)3Mo(OH)(O) > –(SiO)2Mo(O)2 > –(O)4–MoO.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (18) ◽  
pp. 6266-6273
Author(s):  
Yalan Zhang ◽  
Zebin Yu ◽  
Ronghua Jiang ◽  
Jung Huang ◽  
Yanping Hou ◽  
...  

Excellent electrochemical water splitting with remarkable durability can provide a solution to satisfy the increasing global energy demand in which the electrode materials play an important role.


1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (03) ◽  
pp. 859-860
Author(s):  
M. G Davey

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis Marshall-Roth ◽  
Nicole J. Libretto ◽  
Alexandra T. Wrobel ◽  
Kevin Anderton ◽  
Nathan D. Ricke ◽  
...  

Iron- and nitrogen-doped carbon (Fe-N-C) materials are leading candidates to replace platinum in fuel cells, but their active site structures are poorly understood. A leading postulate is that iron active sites in this class of materials exist in an Fe-N<sub>4</sub> pyridinic ligation environment. Yet, molecular Fe-based catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) generally feature pyrrolic coordination and pyridinic Fe-N<sub>4</sub> catalysts are, to the best of our knowledge, non-existent. We report the synthesis and characterization of a molecular pyridinic hexaazacyclophane macrocycle, (phen<sub>2</sub>N<sub>2</sub>)Fe, and compare its spectroscopic, electrochemical, and catalytic properties for oxygen reduction to a prototypical Fe-N-C material, as well as iron phthalocyanine, (Pc)Fe, and iron octaethylporphyrin, (OEP)Fe, prototypical pyrrolic iron macrocycles. N 1s XPS signatures for coordinated N atoms in (phen<sub>2</sub>N<sub>2</sub>)Fe are positively shifted relative to (Pc)Fe and (OEP)Fe, and overlay with those of Fe-N-C. Likewise, spectroscopic XAS signatures of (phen<sub>2</sub>N<sub>2</sub>)Fe are distinct from those of both (Pc)Fe and (OEP)Fe, and are remarkably similar to those of Fe-N-C with compressed Fe–N bond lengths of 1.97 Å in (phen<sub>2</sub>N<sub>2</sub>)Fe that are close to the average 1.94 Å length in Fe-N-C. Electrochemical studies establish that both (Pc)Fe and (phen<sub>2</sub>N<sub>2</sub>)Fe have relatively high Fe(III/II) potentials at ~0.6 V, ~300 mV positive of (OEP)Fe. The ORR onset potential is found to directly correlate with the Fe(III/II) potential leading to a ~300 mV positive shift in the onset of ORR for (Pc)Fe and (phen<sub>2</sub>N<sub>2</sub>)Fe relative to (OEP)Fe. Consequently, the ORR onset for (phen<sub>2</sub>N<sub>2</sub>)Fe and (Pc)Fe is within 150 mV of Fe-N-C. Unlike (OEP)Fe and (Pc)Fe, (phen<sub>2</sub>N<sub>2</sub>)Fe displays excellent selectivity for 4-electron ORR with <4% maximum H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> production, comparable to Fe-N-C materials. The aggregate spectroscopic and electrochemical data establish (phen<sub>2</sub>N<sub>2</sub>)Fe as a pyridinic iron macrocycle that effectively models Fe-N-C active sites, thereby providing a rich molecular platform for understanding this important class of catalytic materials.<p><b></b></p>


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