Catalytic water formation on platinum: a first-principles study

Size-dependent catalytic performance of ruthenium nanoparticles in the hydrogenolysis of a β-O-4 lignin model compound

One-pot depolymerization of lignin to well-defined chemicals and their further deoxygenation to arenes are extremely attractive.

Platinum for hydrogen sensing: surface and grain boundary scattering antagonistic effects in Pt@Au core-shell nanoparticle assemblies prepared using a Langmuir-Blodgett method

Hydrogen resistive sensors are fabricated through the synthesis of a series of Pt@Au core-shell nanoparticles showing various Pt shell thicknesses. Resulting colloids are assembled as hexagonal close-packed 2D monolayers of various dimension characteristics using a simple Langmuir-Blodgett method. The fabricated sensors show attractive hydrogen sensing performances with reversible responses in extended sensing ranges, a good specificity towards H₂, short response and recovery times… Sensing measurements and data analyses allow the demonstration of the associated sensing mechanisms. The dissociative chemisorption of H₂ and O₂ on the Pt surface through a Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism leads to the formation of chemisorbed hydrogen and hydroxyl groups. This surface nature change induces the modification of the scattering of the conduction electrons at both the grain surface and intercontacts, tuned by the extent of hydrogen and hydroxyl group coverages. In assemblies made of particles showing thin Pt shells, the predominance of the surface scattering described by the Fuchs-Sondheimer model accounts for the observed conductive responses as the number of involved grain boundaries is limited. In contrast, in assemblies made of particles with thick Pt shells, the scattering at the grain boundaries described by the Mayadas-Shatzkes model mostly contributes to the observed resistive responses. The sensor behavior is balanced by these two antagonistic effects.

Intramolecular hydrogen bonding in malonaldehyde and its radical analogues

High level Brueckner doubles with triples correction method-based ab initio calculations have been used to investigate the nature of intramolecular hydrogen bonding and intramolecular hydrogen atom transfer in cis-malonaldehyde (MA) and its radical analogues. The radicals considered here are the ones that correspond to the homolytic cleavage of C-H bonds in cis-MA. The results suggest that cis-MA and its radical analogues, cis-MA_RS, and cis-MA_RA, both exist in planar geometry. The calculated intramolecular O-H⋯O=C bond in cis-MA is shorter than that in the radical analogues. The intramolecular hydrogen bond in cis-MA is stronger than in its radicals by at least 3.0 kcal/mol. The stability of a cis-malonaldehyde radical correlates with the extent of electron spin delocalization; cis-MA_RA, in which the radical spin is more delocalized, is the most stable MA radical, whereas cis-MA_RS, in which the radical spin is strongly localized, is the least stable radical. The natural bond orbital analysis indicates that the intramolecular hydrogen bonding (O⋯H⋯O) in cis-malonaldehyde radicals is stabilized by the interaction between the lone pair orbitals of donor oxygen and the σ^* orbital of acceptor O-H bond (n → σ^*_OH). The calculated barriers indicate that the intramolecular proton transfer in cis-MA involves 2.2 kcal/mol lower barrier than that in cis-MA_RS.

Misconceptions in the Exploding Flask Demonstration Resolved through Students' Critical Thinking

As it connects to a large set of important fundamental ideas in chemistry and analytical techniques discussed in high school chemistry curricula, we review the exploding flask demonstration. In this demonstration, methanol vapor is catalytically oxidized by a Pt wire catalyst in an open container. The exothermicity of reactions occurring at the catalytic surface heats the metal to the extent that it glows. When restricting reactant and product gas flow, conditions may favor repetitive occurrence of a small explosion. We show how mass spectrometry and infrared spectroscopy allow for unravelling the chemical background of this demonstration and discuss various ideas on how to use it in a classroom setting to engage students' critical thinking about chemical research. Along the way, we show that two commonly published ideas about the chemical background of this demonstration are incorrect, and we suggest simple tests that may be performed in a high school setting either as an addition to the demonstration or as a student research project.

Water at the Interface Between Defective Graphene and Cu or Pt (111) Surfaces

The presence of defects in the graphenic layers deposited on metal surfaces modifies the nature of the interaction. Unsaturated carbon atoms, due to vacancies in the lattice, form strong organometallic bonds with surface metal atoms that highly enhance the binding energy between the two materials. We investigate by means of a wide set of dispersion-corrected density functional theory calculations how such strong chemical bonds affect both the electronic properties of these hybrid interfaces and the chemical reactivity with water, which is commonly present in the working conditions. We compare different metal substrates (Cu vs Pt) that present a different type of interaction with graphene and with defective graphene. This comparative analysis allows us to unravel the controlling factors of water reactivity, the role played by the carbon vacancies and by the confinement or "graphene cover effect". Water is capable of breaking the C-Cu bond by dissociating at the undercoordinated carbon atom of the vacancy, restoring the weak van der Waals type of interaction between the two materials that allows for an easy detachment of graphene from the metal, but the same is not true in the case of Pt, where C-Pt bonds are much stronger. These conclusions can be used to rationalize water reactivity at other defective graphene/metal interfaces.

Adaptively Compressed Exchange Operator for Large-Scale Hybrid Density Functional Calculations with Applications to the Adsorption of Water on Silicene

Density functional theory (DFT) calculations using hybrid exchange-correlation functionals have been shown to provide an accurate description of the electronic structures of nanosystems. However, such calculations are often limited to small system sizes due to the high computational cost associated with the construction and application of the Hartree-Fock (HF) exchange operator. In this paper, we demonstrate that the recently developed adaptively compressed exchange (ACE) operator formulation [J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2016, 12, 2242-2249] can enable hybrid functional DFT calculations for nanosystems with thousands of atoms. The cost of constructing the ACE operator is the same as that of applying the exchange operator to the occupied orbitals once, while the cost of applying the Hamiltonian operator with a hybrid functional (after construction of the ACE operator) is only marginally higher than that associated with applying a Hamiltonian constructed from local and semilocal exchange-correlation functionals. Therefore, this new development significantly lowers the computational barrier for using hybrid functionals in large-scale DFT calculations. We demonstrate that a parallel planewave implementation of this method can be used to compute the ground-state electronic structure of a 1000-atom bulk silicon system in less than 30 wall clock minutes and that this method scales beyond 8000 computational cores for a bulk silicon system containing about 4000 atoms. The efficiency of the present methodology in treating large systems enables us to investigate adsorption properties of water molecules on Ag-supported two-dimensional silicene. Our computational results show that water monomer, dimer, and trimer configurations exhibit distinct adsorption behaviors on silicene. In particular, the presence of additional water molecules in the dimer and trimer configurations induces a transition from physisorption to chemisorption, followed by dissociation on Ag-supported silicene. This is caused by the enhanced effect of hydrogen bonds on charge transfer and proton transfer processes. Such a hydrogen bond autocatalytic effect is expected to have broad applications for silicene as an efficient surface catalyst for oxygen reduction reactions and water dissociation.

Water at Interfaces

The interfaces of neat water and aqueous solutions play a prominent role in many technological processes and in the environment. Examples of aqueous interfaces are ultrathin water films that cover most hydrophilic surfaces under ambient relative humidities, the liquid/solid interface which drives many electrochemical reactions, and the liquid/vapor interface, which governs the uptake and release of trace gases by the oceans and cloud droplets. In this article we review some of the recent experimental and theoretical advances in our knowledge of the properties of aqueous interfaces and discuss open questions and gaps in our understanding.

Elucidation of adsorption processes at the surface of Pt(331) model electrocatalysts in acidic aqueous media

The Pt(331) surface has long been known to be the most active pure metal electrocatalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in acidic media. Its activity is often higher than those known for the Pt-based alloys towards ORR, being comparable with the most active Pt3Ni(111), Pt3Y or Pt5Gd, and being more active than e.g. polycrystalline Pt3Ni. Multiple active sites at this surface offer adsorption energies which are close to the optimal binding energy with respect to the main ORR intermediates; nevertheless, the exact location of these sites is still not clear. Taking into account the unique surface geometry of Pt(331), some adsorbates (including some oxygenated ORR-intermediates) should also contribute to the electronic structure of the neighbouring catalytic centres. However, the experimental elucidation of the specific adsorption of oxygenated species at this surface appears to be a non-trivial task. Such information holds the keys to the understanding of the high activity of this material and would enable the rational design of nanostructured ORR catalysts even without alloying. In this work, the electrified Pt(331)/electrolyte interface has been characterised using cyclic voltammetry (CV) combined with potentiodynamic electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (PDEIS) in 0.1 M HClO4 solutions. The systems were studied in the potential region between 0.05 V and 1.0 V vs. RHE, where the adsorption of *H, *OH and *O species is possible in both O2-free and O2-saturated electrolytes. Our CV and PDEIS results support the hypothesis that in contrast to Pt(111), many Pt(331) surface sites are likely blocked by *O species at the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell benchmark potential of 0.9 V (RHE). We propose a model illustrated by simplified adsorbate structures at different electrode potentials, which is, however, able to explain the voltammetric and impedance data, and which is in good agreement with previously reported electrocatalytic measurements.

Finding Oxygen Reservoir by Using Extremely Small Test Cell Structure for Resistive Random Access Memory with Replaceable Bottom Electrode

Although the presence of an oxygen reservoir (OR) is assumed in many models that explain resistive switching of resistive random access memory (ReRAM) with electrode/metal oxide (MO)/electrode structures, the location of OR is not clear. We have previously reported a method, which involved the use of an AFM cantilever, for preparing an extremely small ReRAM cell that has a removable bottom electrode (BE). In this study, we used this cell structure to specify the location of OR. Because an anode is often assumed to work as OR, we investigated the effect of changing anodes without changing the MO layer and the cathode on the occurrence of reset. It was found that the reset occurred independently of the catalytic ability and Gibbs free energy (ΔG) of the anode. Our proposed structure enabled to determine that the reset was caused by repairing oxygen vacancies of which a filament consists due to the migration of oxygen ions from the surrounding area when high ΔG anode metal is used, whereas by oxidizing the anode due to the migration of oxygen ions from the MO layer when low ΔG anode metal is used, suggesting the location of OR depends on ΔG of the anode.

The Many Faces of Heterogeneous Ice Nucleation: Interplay Between Surface Morphology and Hydrophobicity

What makes a material a good ice nucleating agent? Despite the importance of heterogeneous ice nucleation to a variety of fields, from cloud science to microbiology, major gaps in our understanding of this ubiquitous process still prevent us from answering this question. In this work, we have examined the ability of generic crystalline substrates to promote ice nucleation as a function of the hydrophobicity and the morphology of the surface. Nucleation rates have been obtained by brute-force molecular dynamics simulations of coarse-grained water on top of different surfaces of a model fcc crystal, varying the water-surface interaction and the surface lattice parameter. It turns out that the lattice mismatch of the surface with respect to ice, customarily regarded as the most important requirement for a good ice nucleating agent, is at most desirable but not a requirement. On the other hand, the balance between the morphology of the surface and its hydrophobicity can significantly alter the ice nucleation rate and can also lead to the formation of up to three different faces of ice on the same substrate. We have pinpointed three circumstances where heterogeneous ice nucleation can be promoted by the crystalline surface: (i) the formation of a water overlayer that acts as an in-plane template; (ii) the emergence of a contact layer buckled in an ice-like manner; and (iii) nucleation on compact surfaces with very high interaction strength. We hope that this extensive systematic study will foster future experimental work aimed at testing the physiochemical understanding presented herein.

Kinetically induced irreversibility in electro-oxidation and reduction of Pt surface

A mean field kinetic model was developed for electrochemical oxidations and reductions of Pt(111) on the basis of density functional theory calculations, and the reaction mechanisms were analyzed. The model reasonably describes asymmetric shapes of cyclic voltammograms and small Tafel slopes of relevant redox reactions observed in experiments without assuming any unphysical forms of rate equations. Simulations using the model indicate that the oxidation of Pt(111) proceeds via an electrochemical oxidation from Pt to PtOH and a disproportionation reaction from PtOH to PtO and Pt, while its reduction proceeds via two electrochemical reductions from PtO to PtOH and from PtOH to Pt.

Coverage-dependent thermodynamic analysis of the formation of water and hydrogen peroxide on a platinum model catalyst

A DFT-based thermodynamic analysis of the adsorption properties of surface intermediates involved in the formation of water and hydrogen peroxide has been proposed at low and high coverages (353 K and 1 atm).

Water clustering on nanostructured iron oxide films

The adhesion of water to solid surfaces is characterized by the tendency to balance competing molecule-molecule and molecule-surface interactions. Hydroxyl groups form strong hydrogen bonds to water molecules and are known to substantially influence the wetting behaviour of oxide surfaces, but it is not well-understood how these hydroxyl groups and their distribution on a surface affect the molecular-scale structure at the interface. Here we report a study of water clustering on a moiré-structured iron oxide thin film with a controlled density of hydroxyl groups. While large amorphous monolayer islands form on the bare film, the hydroxylated iron oxide film acts as a hydrophilic nanotemplate, causing the formation of a regular array of ice-like hexameric nanoclusters. The formation of this ordered phase is localized at the nanometre scale; with increasing water coverage, ordered and amorphous water are found to coexist at adjacent hydroxylated and hydroxyl-free domains of the moiré structure.

Al13@Pt42 core-shell cluster for oxygen reduction reaction

To increase Pt utilization for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in fuel cells, reducing particle sizes of Pt is a valid way. However, poisoning or surface oxidation limits the smallest size of Pt particles at 2.6 nm with a low utility of 20%. Here, using density functional theory calculations, we develop a core-shell Al13@Pt42 cluster as a catalyst for ORR. Benefit from alloying with Al in this cluster, the covalent Pt-Al bonding effectively activates the Pt atoms at the edge sites, enabling its high utility up to 70%. Valuably, the adsorption energy of O is located at the optimal range with 0.0-0.4 eV weaker than Pt(111), while OH-poisoning does not observed. Moreover, ORR comes from O2 dissociation mechanism where the rate-limiting step is located at OH formation from O and H with a barrier of 0.59 eV, comparable with 0.50 eV of OH formation from O and H2O on Pt(111).

Unidirectional suppression of hydrogen oxidation on oxidized platinum clusters

Solar-driven water splitting to produce hydrogen may be an ideal solution for global energy and environment issues. Among the various photocatalytic systems, platinum has been widely used to co-catalyse the reduction of protons in water for hydrogen evolution. However, the undesirable hydrogen oxidation reaction can also be readily catalysed by metallic platinum, which limits the solar energy conversion efficiency in artificial photosynthesis. Here we report that the unidirectional suppression of hydrogen oxidation in photocatalytic water splitting can be fulfilled by controlling the valence state of platinum; this platinum-based cocatalyst in a higher oxidation state can act as an efficient hydrogen evolution site while suppressing the undesirable hydrogen back-oxidation. The findings in this work may pave the way for developing other high-efficientcy platinum-based catalysts for photocatalysis, photoelectrochemistry, fuel cells and water-gas shift reactions.

Solvent-Induced Proton Hopping at a Water-Oxide Interface

Despite widespread interest, a detailed understanding of the dynamics of proton transfer at interfaces is lacking. Here, we use ab initio molecular dynamics to unravel the connection between interfacial water structure and proton transfer for the widely studied and experimentally well-characterized water-ZnO(101̅0) interface. We find that upon going from a single layer of adsorbed water to a liquid multilayer, changes in the structure are accompanied by a dramatic increase in the proton-transfer rate at the surface. We show how hydrogen bonding and rather specific hydrogen-bond fluctuations at the interface are responsible for the change in the structure and proton-transfer dynamics. The implications of this for the chemical reactivity and for the modeling of complex wet oxide interfaces in general are also discussed.

Hydration of metal surfaces can be dynamically heterogeneous and hydrophobic

We have applied molecular dynamics and methods of importance sampling to study structure and dynamics of liquid water in contact with metal surfaces. The specific surfaces considered resemble the 100 and 111 faces of platinum. Several results emerge that should apply generally, not just to platinum. These results are generic consequences of water molecules binding strongly to surfaces that are incommensurate with favorable hydrogen-bonding patterns. We show that adlayers of water under these conditions have frustrated structures that interact unfavorably with adjacent liquid water. We elucidate dynamical processes of water in these cases that extend over a broad range of timescales, from less than picoseconds to more than nanoseconds. Associated spatial correlations extend over nanometers. We show that adlayer reorganization occurs intermittently, and each reorganization event correlates motions of several molecules. We show that soft liquid interfaces form adjacent to the adlayer, as is generally characteristic of liquid water adjacent to a hydrophobic surface. The infrequent adlayer reorganization produces a hydrophobic heterogeneity that we characterize by studying the degrees by which different regions of the adlayers attract small hydrophobic particles. Consequences for electrochemistry are discussed in the context of hydronium ions being attracted from the liquid to the metal–adlayer surface.

A molecular perspective of water at metal interfaces

Water/solid interfaces are relevant to a broad range of physicochemical phenomena and technological processes such as corrosion, lubrication, heterogeneous catalysis and electrochemistry. Although many fields have contributed to rapid progress in the fundamental knowledge of water at interfaces, detailed molecular-level understanding of water/solid interfaces comes mainly from studies on flat metal substrates. These studies have recently shown that a remarkably rich variety of structures form at the interface between water and even seemingly simple flat surfaces. In this Review we discuss the most exciting work in this area, in particular the emerging physical insight and general concepts about how water binds to metal surfaces. We also provide a perspective on outstanding problems, challenges and open questions.

H2O on Pt(111): structure and stability of the first wetting layer

We study the structure and stability of the first water layer on Pt(111) by variable-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy. We find that a high Pt step edge density considerably increases the long-range order of the equilibrium √37 × √37R25.3°- and √39 × √39R16.1°-superstructures, presumably due to the capability of step edges to trap residual adsorbates from the surface. Passivating the step edges with CO or preparing a flat metal surface leads to the formation of disordered structures, which still show the same structural elements as the ordered ones. Coadsorption of Xe and CO proves that the water layer covers the metal surface completely. Moreover, we determine the two-dimensional crystal structure of Xe on top of the chemisorbed water layer which exhibits an Xe-Xe distance close to the one in bulk Xe and a rotation angle of 90° between the close-packed directions of Xe and the close-packed directions of the underlying water layer. CO is shown to replace H(2)O on the Pt(111) surface as has been deduced previously. In addition, we demonstrate that tunneling of electrons into the antibonding state or from the bonding state of H(2)O leads to dissociation of the molecules and a corresponding reordering of the adlayer into a √3 × √3R30°-structure. Finally, a so far not understood restructuring of the adlayer by an increased tunneling current has been observed.