Descriptor Analysis in Methanol Conversion on Doped CeO₂(111): Guidelines for Selectivity Tuning

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Descriptors are crucial to systematize and optimize activity, selectivity, and stability of catalysts. Adsorption energies have usually been taken as the main representative parameter that can summarize reaction energies and activation barriers for simple reactions on relatively simple reaction sites. However, more chemically sound terms, which can be directly mapped to experiments, would be more desirable.Besides, larger molecules with more than one potentially active position and complex sites, like the acid-base pairs present in oxides, are typically beyond the scope provided by common linear-scaling methods. In the present work, we have analyzed the selectivity of the conversion of a polyfunctional molecule on a complex oxide that presents both acid-base and redox chemistry. The conversion of methanol to formaldehyde or CO on isovalently doped ceria (111) has been taken as an example.The selectivity towards CO is triggered by the competition between formaldehyde desorption and C-H cleavage. Our results show that, by introducing dopant cations, the activation energy of the first H-stripping of formaldehyde can be decreased so that its conversion becomes favorable over desorption for Zr, Hf doped systems and expanded lattice ceria. More importantly, desorption is controlled by geometric and acid-base factors, whereas C-H cleavage is exclusively electronically governed through acid-base and redox factors. Thus, both geometric and electronic structure parameters are needed to optimize the performance of ceria to attain the desired selectivity. Selectivity is then estimated by a collective descriptor of the surface that incorporates the ensemble size, acid-base, and redox contributions that can be directly compared to experimental values. In addition, this scaling relationship reduces the error associated to more traditional energy-based descriptors. We can anticipate that the present scheme can be extended to metal oxides and other polyfunctionalized catalysts.2

Developments in the Atomistic Modelling of Catalytic Processes for the Production of Platform Chemicals from Biomass

“…They encompass geometric, redox and acid‐base terms, leaving out second order contributions such as phase cooperation, multifunctionality of active sites, and site isolation . Our results show that elementary steps on different surfaces and in doped materials can be traced back to these parameters, particularly the redox terms, thus establishing a robust framework for future studies ,…”

“…While acid-base reactions are stable against the U term, the redox ones need to be benchmarked. [126][127][128][129][130][131] In addition, we have observed that the electronic structure can be very dynamic for reducible oxides. For oxides with more than one consecutive oxidation state, defects like oxide vacancies can provide two electronic structures that are dynamically interconnected, and thus both can be active parts of the catalytic cycle.…”

“…[136] Our results show that elementary steps on different surfaces and in doped materials can be traced back to these parameters, particularly the redox terms, thus establishing a robust framework for future studies. [137,138] 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57…”

“…Acid‐base reactions are easily described by standard GGA methods. The main issue is that reactions that reduce/oxidize the surface require the use of GGA+U approaches, where the U stands for a local fix of the electron self‐interaction that appears for strongly correlated materials . This problem has been reported in the literature for years but there are further implications.…”

“…This is due to the different electron localization and imposes severe constrains when addressing the reactivity on oxides in complex reaction networks. While acid‐base reactions are stable against the U term, the redox ones need to be benchmarked . In addition, we have observed that the electronic structure can be very dynamic for reducible oxides.…”