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Title: Acetylene hydrogenation catalyzed by bare and Ni doped CeO 2 (110): the role of frustrated Lewis pairs
Ceria (CeO 2 ) has recently been found to catalyze the selective hydrogenation of alkynes, which has stimulated much discussion on the catalytic mechanism on various facets of reducible oxides. In this work, H 2 dissociation and acetylene hydrogenation on bare and Ni doped CeO 2 (110) surfaces are investigated using density functional theory (DFT). Similar to that on the CeO 2 (111) surface, our results suggest that catalysis is facilitated by frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) formed by oxygen vacancies (O v s) on the oxide surfaces. On bare CeO 2 (110) with a single O v (CeO 2 (110)–O v ), two surface Ce cations with one non-adjacent O anion are shown to form (Ce 3+ –Ce 4+ )/O quasi-FLPs, while for the Ni doped CeO 2 (110) surface with one (Ni–CeO 2 (110)–O v ) or two (Ni–CeO 2 (110)–2O v ) O v s, one Ce and a non-adjacent O counterions are found to form a mono-Ce/O FLP. DFT calculations indicate that Ce/O FLPs facilitate the H 2 dissociation via a heterolytic mechanism, while the resulting surface O–H and Ce–H species catalyze the subsequent acetylene hydrogenation. With CeO 2 (110)–O v and Ni–CeO 2 (110)–2O v , our DFT calculations suggest that the first hydrogenation step is the rate-determining step with a barrier of 0.43 and 0.40 eV, respectively. For Ni–CeO 2 (110)–O v , the reaction is shown to be controlled by the H 2 dissociation with a barrier of 0.41 eV. These barriers are significantly lower than that (about 0.7 eV) on CeO 2 (111), explaining the experimentally observed higher catalytic efficiency of the (110) facet of ceria. The change of the rate-determining step is attributed to the different electronic properties of Ce in the Ce/O FLPs – the Ce f states closer to the Fermi level not only facilitate the heterolytic dissociation of H 2 but also lead to a higher barrier of acetylene hydrogenation.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1951328
PAR ID:
10326067
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics
Volume:
24
Issue:
18
ISSN:
1463-9076
Page Range / eLocation ID:
11295 to 11304
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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