The effect of the suppport on oxidative dehydrogenation activity for vanadia/ceria systems is examined for the oxidation of methanol to formaldehyde by use of well-defined VO(x)/CeO(2)(111) model catalysts. Temperature-programmed desorption at low vanadia loadings revealed reactivity at much lower temperature (370 K) as compared to pure ceria and vanadia on inert supports such as silica. Density functional theory is applied and the energies of hydrogenation and oxygen vacancy formation also predict an enhanced reactivity of the vanadia/ceria system. At the origin of this support effect is the ability of ceria to stabilize reduced states by accommodating electrons in localized f-states.

Supported vanadium oxide catalysts have received considerable attention owing to their high activity for selective oxidation reactions. [1][2][3][4][5] The reactivity has been shown to depend strongly on the oxide support, [2][3][4][5] with reducible oxides (e.g., ceria, titania, and zirconia) exhibiting much higher turnover frequencies for oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) reactions than irreducible oxides (e.g., silica and alumina). [3,5] Structural characterization of the catalysts has been performed primarily using Raman and UV/Vis spectroscopy (see Ref. [4,6,7] and references therein), as well as X-ray absorption spectroscopy.[8] These results have been used to postulate that vanadia catalysts consist of isolated and polymer structures that wet the supporting oxide (so-called "monolayer catalysts"). To elucidate the surface chemistry of vanadia, different model systems, such as vanadia single crystals [9] and thin films [10] as well as vanadia clusters supported on planar metal oxide substrates, [11][12][13][14][15] have been studied experimentally by surface-science techniques and computational means. [16,17] To rationalize structure-reactivity relationships, welldefined systems are required. Of the reducible metal oxide supports that are known to be highly active in ODH reactions, ceria is particularly suited, because well-ordered thin films can be grown with a known surface termination. [18,19] Previously, the structure and reactivity of vanadia supported on CeO 2 (111) has been studied using photoelectron spectroscopy (PES) and temperature-programmed desorption (TPD). [14,15] However, the atomic structure of ceria-supported vanadia monolayer catalysts has not been resolved.Herein, using a combination of high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (IRAS), and PES with synchrotron radiation, we unambiguously demonstrate the formation of monomeric O=V 5+ O 3 species on the CeO 2 (111) surface at low vanadia loadings. For the first time, we show a direct relationship between the nuclearity of vanadia species (monomeric vs. polymeric) as observed by STM and their vibrational properties. We show that ceria stabilizes the vanadium + 5 oxidation state, leading to partially reduced ceria upon vanadium deposition. These experimental results are fully supported by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The results indicate that ceria surfaces stabilize small vanadia species, such as monomers and trimers, that sinter into two-dimensional, monolayer islands. Such stabilization probably plays a crucial role in the enhanced activity observed for ceriasupported vanadia in ODH reactions. Indeed, low-nuclearity species revealed reactivities at much lower temperatures [20] than those with higher nuclearity, which in turn show strong similarities to the reactivity of vanadia clusters supported on alumina and silica. [11,13] Figure 1 presents compelling evidence for the presence of vanadia monomers on ceria at low coverage (ca. 0.3 V atoms nm À2 ). The STM image in Fi...

The chemical transformations of formamide (NH(2)CHO), a molecule of prebiotic interest as a precursor for biomolecules, are investigated using methods of electronic structure computations and Rice-Rampserger-Kassel-Marcus (RRKM) theory. Specifically, quantum chemical calculations applying the coupled-cluster theory CCSD(T), whose energies are extrapolated to the complete basis set limit (CBS), are carried out to construct the [CH(3)NO] potential energy surface. RRKM theory is then used to systematically examine decomposition channels leading to the formation of small molecules including CO, NH(3), H(2)O, HCN, HNC, H(2), HNCO, and HOCN. The energy barriers for the decarboxylation, dehydrogenation, and dehydration processes are found to be in the range of 73-78 kcal/mol. H(2) loss is predicted to be a one-step process although a two-step process is competitive. CO elimination is found to prefer a two-step pathway involving the carbene isomer NH(2)CHO (aminohydroxymethylene) as an intermediate. This CO-elimination channel is also favored over the one-step H(2) loss, in agreement with experiment. The H(2)O loss is a multistep process passing through a formimic acid conformer, which subsequently undergoes a rate-limiting dehydration. The dehydration appears to be particularly favored in the low-temperature regime. The new feature identifies aminohydroxymethylene as a transient but crucial intermediate in the decarboxylation of formamide.

Supported vanadium oxide catalysts have received considerable attention owing to their high activity for selective oxidation reactions. [1][2][3][4][5] The reactivity has been shown to depend strongly on the oxide support, [2][3][4][5] with reducible oxides (e.g., ceria, titania, and zirconia) exhibiting much higher turnover frequencies for oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) reactions than irreducible oxides (e.g., silica and alumina). [3,5] Structural characterization of the catalysts has been performed primarily using Raman and UV/Vis spectroscopy (see Ref. [4,6,7] and references therein), as well as X-ray absorption spectroscopy.[8] These results have been used to postulate that vanadia catalysts consist of isolated and polymer structures that wet the supporting oxide (so-called "monolayer catalysts"). To elucidate the surface chemistry of vanadia, different model systems, such as vanadia single crystals [9] and thin films [10] as well as vanadia clusters supported on planar metal oxide substrates, [11][12][13][14][15] have been studied experimentally by surface-science techniques and computational means. [16,17] To rationalize structure-reactivity relationships, welldefined systems are required. Of the reducible metal oxide supports that are known to be highly active in ODH reactions, ceria is particularly suited, because well-ordered thin films can be grown with a known surface termination. [18,19] Previously, the structure and reactivity of vanadia supported on CeO 2 (111) has been studied using photoelectron spectroscopy (PES) and temperature-programmed desorption (TPD). [14,15] However, the atomic structure of ceria-supported vanadia monolayer catalysts has not been resolved.Herein, using a combination of high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (IRAS), and PES with synchrotron radiation, we unambiguously demonstrate the formation of monomeric O=V 5+ O 3 species on the CeO 2 (111) surface at low vanadia loadings. For the first time, we show a direct relationship between the nuclearity of vanadia species (monomeric vs. polymeric) as observed by STM and their vibrational properties. We show that ceria stabilizes the vanadium + 5 oxidation state, leading to partially reduced ceria upon vanadium deposition. These experimental results are fully supported by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The results indicate that ceria surfaces stabilize small vanadia species, such as monomers and trimers, that sinter into two-dimensional, monolayer islands. Such stabilization probably plays a crucial role in the enhanced activity observed for ceriasupported vanadia in ODH reactions. Indeed, low-nuclearity species revealed reactivities at much lower temperatures [20] than those with higher nuclearity, which in turn show strong similarities to the reactivity of vanadia clusters supported on alumina and silica. [11,13] Figure 1 presents compelling evidence for the presence of vanadia monomers on ceria at low coverage (ca. 0.3 V atoms nm À2 ). The STM image in Fi...

Abstract.Vanadia "monolayer"-type catalysts supported on reducible oxides such as ceria previously have shown high activity for the selective oxidation of alcohols. Here, a model system consisting of vanadia particles deposited on well-ordered CeO 2 (111) thin films has been employed. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), photoelectron spectroscopy (PES), and infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (IRAS) were used to characterize the VO x /CeO 2 surface as a function of vanadia loading. The formation of isolated monomeric species as well as two-dimensional vanadia islands that wet the ceria support was directly observed by STM. The vanadia species exhibit V in a +5 oxidation state and expose vanadyl (V=O) groups with stretching vibrations that blue -shift from ~1005 cm -1 , to ~1040 cm -1 with increasing coverage.Temperature programmed desorption (TPD) of methanol revealed three peaks for formaldehyde production. One is correlated with reactivity on the ceria support (565-590 K). Another is correlated with reactivity on large vanadia particles (475-505 K) similar to that previously observed on vanadia/silica and vanadia/alumina model systems. A low temperature reaction pathway (~370 K) is observed at low coverage, which is assigned to the reactivity of isolated vanadia species surrounded by a reduced ceria surface. It is concluded that strong support effects reported in the literature for the real catalysts are likely related to the stabilization of small vanadia clusters by reducible oxide supports.

A three-parameter microcanonical theory of gas-surface reactivity is used to investigate the dissociative chemisorption of methane impinging on a Ni(100) surface. Assuming an apparent threshold energy for dissociative chemisorption of E(0)=65 kJ/mol, contributions to the dissociative sticking coefficient from individual methane vibrational states are calculated: (i) as a function of molecular translational energy to model nonequilibrium molecular beam experiments and (ii) as a function of temperature to model thermal equilibrium mbar pressure bulb experiments. Under fairly typical molecular beam conditions (e.g., E(t)>/=25 kJ mol(-1), T(s)>/=475 K, T(n)/=100 K the dissociative sticking is dominated by methane in vibrationally excited states, particularly those involving excitation of the nu(4) bending mode. Fractional energy uptakes f(j) defined as the fraction of the mean energy of the reacting gas-surface collision complexes that derives from specific degrees of freedom of the reactants (i.e., molecular translation, rotation, vibration, and surface) are calculated for thermal dissociative chemisorption. At 500 K, the fractional energy uptakes are calculated to be f(t)=14%, f(r)=21%, f(v)=40%, and f(s)=25%. Over the temperature range from 500 K to 1500 K relevant to thermal catalysis, the incident gas-phase molecules supply the preponderance of energy used to surmount the barrier to dissociative chemisorption, f(g)=f(t)+f(r)+f(v) approximately 75%, with the highest energy uptake always coming from the molecular vibrational degrees of freedom. The predictions of the statistical, mode-nonspecific microcanonical theory are compared to those of other dynamical theories and to recent experimental data.

The dissociative sticking coefficient for CH4 on Pt(111) has been measured as a function of both gas temperature (Tg) and surface temperature (Ts) using effusive molecular beam and angle-integrated ambient gas dosing methods. The experimental results are used to optimize the three parameters of a microcanonical unimolecular rate theory (MURT) model of the reactive system. The MURT calculations allow us to extract transition state properties from the data as well as to compare our data directly to other molecular beam and thermal equilibrium sticking measurements. We find a threshold energy for dissociation of E0 = 52.5 +/- 3.5 kJ mol(-1). Furthermore, the MURT with an optimized parameter set provides for a predictive understanding of the kinetics of this C-H bond activation reaction, that is, it allows us to predict the dissociative sticking coefficient of CH4 on Pt(111) for any combination of Ts and Tg even if the two are not equal to one another, indeed, the distribution of molecular energy need not even be thermal. Comparison of our results to those from recent thermal equilibrium catalysis studies on CH4 reforming over Pt nanoclusters ( approximately 2 nm diam) dispersed on oxide substrates indicates that the reactivity of Pt(111) exceeds that of the Pt nanocatalysts by several orders of magnitude.

Supported Au-Pd catalysts have been shown to exhibit superior catalytic performances when compared to their monometallic counterparts in a variety of reactions. In addition, the nature of the support often plays a critical role in reactivity. To gain a deeper understanding of the structure-reactivity relationship of the Au-Pd catalysts, here we have employed model systems where monometallic and bimetallic Au-Pd nanoparticles are deposited on well-ordered thin films of reducible and irreducible oxides (i.e., Fe 3 O 4 (111), MgO(100), and CeO 2 (111)). Surface structures of the model systems were characterized by temperature-programmed desorption, sum frequency generation, and infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy of CO as a probe molecule. In agreement with previous studies, the results show segregation of gold to the surface. Density functional theory calculations confirm that Au prefers to be at the edges of AuPd alloy particles under vacuum conditions. Strong similarities between the spectral features observed for metal particles on these oxide substrates suggest that the reducibility of the support does not affect the surface structure. † Part of the "D. Wayne Goodman Festschrift".