With the increasing cost of energy and the fast depletion of fossil fuels, it is evident that new ways for energy production need to be explored and realized in the near future. The most promising primary energy sources with negligible CO 2 emissions are biomass, nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar power. A new method using a concentrated solar-power-driven heat engine based on reactive metal oxides allows for efficient splitting of water into H 2 and O 2 as well as the production of CO and O 2 from CO 2 . 1 CO may be used to generate additional hydrogen via the water-gas-shift (WGS) reactionHydrogen can act directly as a secondary energy carrier, and its energy can be recovered as needed using hydrogen fuel cells.Although the development of highly efficient fuel cells is fairly advanced, there exist several significant hurdles for the widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells in automotive and other mobile applications. As an alternative, CO 2 and H 2 can be used to synthesize methanol. Methanol is produced on an industrial scale from mixtures of CO/CO 2 /H 2 (synthesis gas) over a Cu/ZnO/ Al 2 O 3 catalyst at typical reaction conditions of 230-280 °C and 50-120 atm. 2 Methanol can be used as a transportation fuel in either modified internal combustion engines or direct methanol fuel cells. In addition to acting as an energy carrier, methanol is

We present a microkinetic model as well as experimental data for the low-temperature water gas shift (WGS) reaction catalyzed by Pt at temperatures from 523 to 573 K and for various gas compositions at a pressure of 1 atm. Thermodynamic and kinetic parameters for the model are derived from periodic, self-consistent density functional theory (DFT-GGA) calculations on Pt(111). The destabilizing effect of high CO surface coverage on the binding energies of surface species is quantified through DFT calculations and accounted for in the microkinetic model. Deviations of specific fitted model parameters from DFT calculated parameters on Pt(111) point to the possible role of steps/defects in this reaction. Our model predicts reaction rates and reaction orders in good agreement with our experiments. The calculated and experimental apparent activation energies are 67.8 kJ/mol and 71.4 kJ/mol, respectively. The model shows that the most significant reaction channel proceeds via a carboxyl (COOH) intermediate. Formate (HCOO), which has been experimentally observed and thought to be the key WGS intermediate in the literature, is shown to act only as a spectator species.

Easier oxidation over gold with added water Gold adsorbed on metal oxides is an excellent catalyst for the room-temperature oxidation of CO to CO 2 . However, there has been continuing disagreement between different studies on the key aspects of this catalyst. Saveeda et al. now show through kinetics and infrared spectroscopy that the presence of water can lower the reaction activation barrier by enabling OOH groups to form from adsorbed oxygen (see the Perspective by Mullen and Mullins). The OOH then reacts readily with CO. It thus seems that the main role of oxide support and its interface with the metal is in activating water, but that the steps of the reaction that involve CO occur on gold. Science , this issue p. 1599 ; see also p. 1564

Mg rechargeable batteries (MgRBs) represent a safe and high-energy battery technology but suffer from the lack of suitable cathode materials due to the slow solid-state diffusion of the highly polarizing divalent Mg ion. Previous methods improve performance at the cost of incompatibility with anode/electrolyte and drastic decrease in volumetric energy density. Herein we report interlayer expansion as a general and effective atomic-level lattice engineering approach to transform inactive intercalation hosts into efficient Mg storage materials without introducing adverse side effects. As a proof-of-concept we have combined theory, synthesis, electrochemical measurement, and kinetic analysis to improve Mg diffusion behavior in MoS2, which is a poor Mg transporting material in its pristine form. First-principles simulations suggest that expanded interlayer spacing allows for fast Mg diffusion because of weakened Mg-host interactions. Experimentally, the expansion was realized by inserting a controlled amount of poly(ethylene oxide) into the lattice of MoS2 to increase the interlayer distance from 0.62 nm to up to 1.45 nm. The expansion boosts Mg diffusivity by 2 orders of magnitude, effectively enabling the otherwise barely active MoS2 to approach its theoretical storage capacity as well as to achieve one of the highest rate capabilities among Mg-intercalation materials. The interlayer expansion approach can be leveraged to a wide range of host materials for the storage of various ions, leading to novel intercalation chemistry and opening up new opportunities for the development of advanced materials for next-generation energy storage.

Using high temperature CO oxidation as the example, trends in the reactivity of transition metals are discussed on the basis of density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Volcano type relations between the catalytic rate and adsorption energies of important intermediates are introduced and the effect of adsorbate-adsorbate interaction on the trends is discussed. We find that adsorbateadsorbate interactions significantly increase the activity of strong binding metals (left side of the volcano) but the interactions do not change the relative activity of different metals and have a very small influence on the position of the top of the volcano, that is, on which metal is the best catalyst.

It is shown that for all the essential bond forming and bond breaking reactions on metal surfaces, the reactivity of the metal surface correlates linearly with the reaction energy in a single universal relation. Such correlations provide an easy way of establishing trends in reactivity among the different transition metals. Keywords Density Functional Theory -Stepped surfaces -Coupling reactions -Bond breaking reactions -BEP relations -Scaling relationsTo bridge the gap between macroscopic properties of a catalyst, such as turn-over rates and selectivity and the microscopic properties obtained from electronic structure methods based on density functional theory (DFT), an in depth understanding of the underlying thermodynamics and kinetics of the corresponding metal surfaces is needed. Today, DFT has reached a level of sophistication where it can be used to describe complete catalytic reactions and hence provide an insight that pinpoints to the origin of the catalytic activity and selectivity. 1,2,3,4,5,6 However, extensive DFT calculations that eventually lead to this understanding are still computationally demanding. A simplification that connects the reactivity and selectivity of a catalytic surface to one or few descriptors is therefore extremely useful. Such a simplification, e.g. the Brønsted-Evans-Polanyi (BEP) relations, is able to show that the transition state energy of a reaction is linearly depending on the reaction energy. 7,8,9,10,11,12 * Corresponding author SLAC-PUB-14285 2 Herein, we investigate the transition state energies of a large number of essential bond breaking and forming reactions that play a key role in the catalytic transformation of a large fraction of base chemicals. The transition state energies investigated include C-C, C-O, C-N, N-O, N-N, and O-O coupling and have been calculated on different stepped surfaces of transition metals such as Co, Ni, Cu, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag, Ir, Pt, and Au. For a dissociation reaction (AB → A+B), the transition state energy (E ts ) is calculated by Equation (1), in which E ts/slab , E slab and E gas are the total energies of the slab with transition states, the clean slab, and the gas phase molecules relevant for the reactions, respectively. The dissociative adsorption energy (E diss ) is calculated by Equation (2), in which E A/slab and E B/slab are the total energies of the slab with adsorbates A and B, respectively.(1)All calculations were performed using the DACAPO plane-wave pseudo potential DFT code. 13 Ionic cores were described by ultrasoft pseudopotentials 14, and the Kohn-Sham one-electron valence states were expanded in a basis of plane wave functions with a cutoff energy up to 340 eV. For most adsorption systems, the surface Brillouin zone was sampled using a Monkhorst-Pack grid of size 4×4×1, while 2×3×1 was used for O 2 , and 8×6×1 was used for N 2 and NO as a test of the parameters. The self-consistent electron density was determined by iterative diagonalization of the Kohn-Sham Hamiltonian. A Fermi distribution for the population of...

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The diffusion of hydrogen atoms across solid oxide surfaces is often assumed to be accelerated by the presence of water molecules. Here we present a high-resolution, high-speed scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) study of the diffusion of H atoms on an FeO thin film. STM movies directly reveal a water-mediated hydrogen diffusion mechanism on the oxide surface at temperatures between 100 and 300 kelvin. Density functional theory calculations and isotope-exchange experiments confirm the STM observations, and a proton-transfer mechanism that proceeds via an H(3)O(+)-like transition state is revealed. This mechanism differs from that observed previously for rutile TiO(2)(110), where water dissociation is a key step in proton diffusion.