scholarly journals A Unique Ru-N4-P Coordinated Structure Synergistically Waking Up the Nonmetal P Active Site for Hydrogen Production

Research ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Chuanqiang Wu ◽  
Shiqing Ding ◽  
Daobin Liu ◽  
Dongdong Li ◽  
Shuangming Chen ◽  
...  

Numerous experiments have demonstrated that the metal atom is the active center of monoatomic catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), while the active sites of nonmetal doped atoms are often neglected. By combining theoretical prediction and experimental verification, we designed a unique ternary Ru-N4-P coordination structure constructed by monodispersed Ru atoms supported on N,P dual-doped graphene for highly efficient hydrogen evolution in acid solution. The density functional theory calculations indicate that the charge polarization will lead to the most charge accumulation at P atoms, which results in a distinct nonmetallic P active sites with the moderate H∗ adsorption energy. Notably, these P atoms mainly supply highly efficient catalytic sites with ultrasmall absorption energy of 0.007 eV. Correspondingly, the Ru-N4-P demonstrated outstanding HER performance not only in an acidic condition but also in alkaline environment. Notably, the performance of Ru-NPC catalyst at high current is even superior to the commercial Pt/C catalysts, whether in acidic or alkaline medium. Our in situ synchrotron radiation infrared spectra demonstrate that a P-Hads intermediate is continually emerging on the Ru-NPC catalyst, actively proving the nonmetallic P catalytically active site in HER that is very different with previously reported metallic sites.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Wang ◽  
Sagar Udyavara ◽  
Matthew Neurock ◽  
C. Daniel Frisbie

<div> <div> <div> <p> </p><div> <div> <div> <p>Electrocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution at monolayer MoS2 electrodes can be enhanced by the application of an electric field normal to the electrode plane. The electric field is produced by a gate electrode lying underneath the MoS2 and separated from it by a dielectric. Application of a voltage to the back-side gate electrode while sweeping the MoS2 electrochemical potential in a conventional manner in 0.5 M H2SO4 results in up to a 140-mV reduction in overpotential for hydrogen evolution at current densities of 50 mA/cm2. Tafel analysis indicates that the exchange current density is correspondingly improved by a factor of 4 to 0.1 mA/cm2 as gate voltage is increased. Density functional theory calculations support a mechanism in which the higher hydrogen evolution activity is caused by gate-induced electronic charge on Mo metal centers adjacent the S vacancies (the active sites), leading to enhanced Mo-H bond strengths. Overall, our findings indicate that the back-gated working electrode architecture is a convenient and versatile platform for investigating the connection between tunable electronic charge at active sites and overpotential for electrocatalytic processes on ultrathin electrode materials.</p></div></div></div><br><p></p></div></div></div>


2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (48) ◽  
pp. 12124-12129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin E. R. Snyder ◽  
Max L. Bols ◽  
Hannah M. Rhoda ◽  
Pieter Vanelderen ◽  
Lars H. Böttger ◽  
...  

A direct, catalytic conversion of benzene to phenol would have wide-reaching economic impacts. Fe zeolites exhibit a remarkable combination of high activity and selectivity in this conversion, leading to their past implementation at the pilot plant level. There were, however, issues related to catalyst deactivation for this process. Mechanistic insight could resolve these issues, and also provide a blueprint for achieving high performance in selective oxidation catalysis. Recently, we demonstrated that the active site of selective hydrocarbon oxidation in Fe zeolites, named α-O, is an unusually reactive Fe(IV)=O species. Here, we apply advanced spectroscopic techniques to determine that the reaction of this Fe(IV)=O intermediate with benzene in fact regenerates the reduced Fe(II) active site, enabling catalytic turnover. At the same time, a small fraction of Fe(III)-phenolate poisoned active sites form, defining a mechanism for catalyst deactivation. Density-functional theory calculations provide further insight into the experimentally defined mechanism. The extreme reactivity of α-O significantly tunes down (eliminates) the rate-limiting barrier for aromatic hydroxylation, leading to a diffusion-limited reaction coordinate. This favors hydroxylation of the rapidly diffusing benzene substrate over the slowly diffusing (but more reactive) oxygenated product, thereby enhancing selectivity. This defines a mechanism to simultaneously attain high activity (conversion) and selectivity, enabling the efficient oxidative upgrading of inert hydrocarbon substrates.


Author(s):  
Khorsed Alam ◽  
Tisita Das ◽  
Sudip Chakraborty ◽  
Prasenjit Sen

Electronic structure calculations based on density functional theory are used to identify the catalytically active sites for the hydrogen evolution reaction on single layers of the two transition metal tri-chalcogenide...


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yizhen Chen ◽  
Rachita Rana ◽  
Tyler Sours ◽  
FERNANDO D. VILA ◽  
Shaohong Cao ◽  
...  

Atomically dispersed supported metal catalysts offer new properties and the benefits of maximized metal accessibility and utilization. The characterization of these materials, however, remains challenging. Using atomically-dispersed Pt supported on crystalline MgO (chosen for its well-defined bonding sites for Pt) as a prototypical example, in this work, we demonstrate how systematic density functional theory calculations (for assessing all the potentially stable Pt sites) combined with automated EXAFS analysis can lead to unbiased identification of isolated, surface-enveloped platinum cations as the catalytic species for CO oxidation. The catalyst has been characterized by atomic-resolution imaging, EXAFS, and HERFD-XANES spectroscopies; the proposed Pt site are in full agreement with experiment. This theory-guided workflow leads to rigorously determined structural models and provides a more detailed picture of the structure of the catalytically active sites than what is currently possible with conventional EXAFS analysis. As this approach is efficient and agnostic to the metal, support, and catalytic reaction, we posit that it will be of broad interest to the materials characterization and catalysis communities.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Wang ◽  
Sagar Udyavara ◽  
Matthew Neurock ◽  
C. Daniel Frisbie

<div> <div> <div> <p> </p><div> <div> <div> <p>Electrocatalytic activity for hydrogen evolution at monolayer MoS2 electrodes can be enhanced by the application of an electric field normal to the electrode plane. The electric field is produced by a gate electrode lying underneath the MoS2 and separated from it by a dielectric. Application of a voltage to the back-side gate electrode while sweeping the MoS2 electrochemical potential in a conventional manner in 0.5 M H2SO4 results in up to a 140-mV reduction in overpotential for hydrogen evolution at current densities of 50 mA/cm2. Tafel analysis indicates that the exchange current density is correspondingly improved by a factor of 4 to 0.1 mA/cm2 as gate voltage is increased. Density functional theory calculations support a mechanism in which the higher hydrogen evolution activity is caused by gate-induced electronic charge on Mo metal centers adjacent the S vacancies (the active sites), leading to enhanced Mo-H bond strengths. Overall, our findings indicate that the back-gated working electrode architecture is a convenient and versatile platform for investigating the connection between tunable electronic charge at active sites and overpotential for electrocatalytic processes on ultrathin electrode materials.</p></div></div></div><br><p></p></div></div></div>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anish Dasgupta ◽  
Hoaran He ◽  
Rushi Gong ◽  
Shun-Li Shang ◽  
Eric Zimmerer ◽  
...  

Abstract Intermetallic compounds offer unique opportunities for atom-by-atom manipulation of catalytic ensembles through precise stoichiometric control. The [Pd, (M), Zn] γ-brass phase allows for controlled synthesis of Pd-M-Pd catalytic sites (M = Zn, Pd, Cu, Ag and Au) isolated in an inert Zn matrix. These multi-atom heteronuclear active sites are catalytically distinct from Pd single atoms and fully coordinated Pd. We quantify the unexpectedly large effect of active site composition (i.e., identity of M atom in Pd-M-Pd sites) on ethylene selectivity during acetylene semi-hydrogenation. Subtle stoichiometric control demonstrates Pd-Pd-Pd sites are active for ethylene hydrogenation, whereas Pd-Zn-Pd sites show no measurable ethylene to ethane conversion. Agreement between experimental and density functional theory predicted activities and selectivities demonstrates precise control of Pd-M-Pd active site composition. The diversity and well-defined structure of intermetallics can be utilized to design active sites assembled with atomic-level precision.


2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (01) ◽  
pp. 1450018 ◽  
Author(s):  
PING HE ◽  
JIANG WU ◽  
XIUMIN JIANG ◽  
WEIGUO PAN ◽  
JIANXING REN

Density functional theory calculations are performed to provide a molecular-level understanding of the mechanism of mercury adsorption on sulfuric acid-impregnated carbonaceous surface. The carbonaceous surface is modeled by a nine-fused benzene ring in which its edge carbon atoms on the upper side are unsaturated to simulate the active sites for reaction. SO 4 clusters with and without charge are examined to act as the representative species to model the sulfuric acid absorbed on the carbonaceous surface. All of the possible approaches of SO 4 clusters with and without charge on the carbonaceous surface are conduced to study their effects on mercury adsorption. The results suggest that sulfuric acid effect on the mercury adsorption capacity of the carbonaceous surface is very complicated, and it depends on a combination of concentration and charge of SO 4 cluster. SO 4 cluster presents a positive effect on mercury adsorption on the carbonaceous surface, but higher concentration of SO 4 cluster decreases the adsorption capacity of the carbonaceous surface for mercury removal because there is considerable competition for active sites between Hg and SO 4 cluster. Since all of the possible approaches of mercury on the carbonaceous surface with [Formula: see text] cluster, excluding one that mercury is adsorbed at bridge active site, can lead to the decrease in the adsorption energies of mercury on the carbonaceous surface, [Formula: see text] cluster presents a negative effect on the capacity of the carbonaceous surface for mercury adsorption regardless of the concentration of [Formula: see text] cluster. The results also indicate that SO 2 cluster and surface oxygen complex can be formed from SO 4 cluster with or without charge if mercury is adsorbed at bridge active site, which facilitates the mercury removal for the carbonaceous surface.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seoin Back ◽  
Kevin Tran ◽  
Zachary Ulissi

<div> <div> <div> <div><p>Developing active and stable oxygen evolution catalysts is a key to enabling various future energy technologies and the state-of-the-art catalyst is Ir-containing oxide materials. Understanding oxygen chemistry on oxide materials is significantly more complicated than studying transition metal catalysts for two reasons: the most stable surface coverage under reaction conditions is extremely important but difficult to understand without many detailed calculations, and there are many possible active sites and configurations on O* or OH* covered surfaces. We have developed an automated and high-throughput approach to solve this problem and predict OER overpotentials for arbitrary oxide surfaces. We demonstrate this for a number of previously-unstudied IrO2 and IrO3 polymorphs and their facets. We discovered that low index surfaces of IrO2 other than rutile (110) are more active than the most stable rutile (110), and we identified promising active sites of IrO2 and IrO3 that outperform rutile (110) by 0.2 V in theoretical overpotential. Based on findings from DFT calculations, we pro- vide catalyst design strategies to improve catalytic activity of Ir based catalysts and demonstrate a machine learning model capable of predicting surface coverages and site activity. This work highlights the importance of investigating unexplored chemical space to design promising catalysts.<br></p></div></div></div></div><div><div><div> </div> </div> </div>


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Long Lin ◽  
Linwei Yao ◽  
Shaofei Li ◽  
Zhengguang Shi ◽  
Kun Xie ◽  
...  

AbstractFinding the active sites of suitable metal oxides is a key prerequisite for detecting CH$$_4$$ 4 . The purpose of the paper is to investigate the adsorption of CH$$_4$$ 4 on intrinsic and oxygen-vacancies CuO (111) and (110) surfaces using density functional theory calculations. The results show that CH$$_4$$ 4 has a strong adsorption energy of −0.370 to 0.391 eV at all site on the CuO (110) surface. The adsorption capacity of CH$$_4$$ 4 on CuO (111) surface is weak, ranging from −0.156 to −0.325 eV. In the surface containing oxygen vacancies, the adsorption capacity of CuO surface to CH$$_4$$ 4 is significantly stronger than that of intrinsic CuO surface. The results indicate that CuO (110) has strong adsorption and charge transfer capacity for CH$$_4$$ 4 , which may provide experimental guidance.


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