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Fundamentals of C–O bond activation on metal oxide catalysts

Nature Catalysis volume 2, pages 269–276 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Fundamental knowledge of the active site requirements for the selective activation of C–O bonds over heterogeneous catalysts is required to design multistep processes for the synthesis of complex chemicals. Here we employ reaction kinetics measurements, extensive catalyst characterization, first principles calculations and microkinetic modelling to reveal metal oxides as a general class of catalysts capable of selectively cleaving C–O bonds with unsaturation at the α position, at a moderate temperature and H2 pressure. Strikingly, metal oxides are considerably more active catalysts than commonly employed VIIIB and IB transition metal catalysts. We identify the normalized Gibbs free energy of oxide formation as both a reactivity and a catalyst stability descriptor and demonstrate the generality of the radical-mediated, reverse Mars–van Krevelen C–O bond activation mechanism on oxygen vacancies, previously established only for RuO2. Importantly, we provide evidence that the substrate plays an equally key role to the catalyst in C–O bond activation.

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Fig. 1: Vacancy-mediated hydrodeoxygenation mechanism.
Fig. 2: Kinetics and characterization of selected oxide catalysts.
Fig. 3: Volcano dependence of the C–O scission rate on M–O bond strength.
Fig. 4: Operando characterization of oxides as a function of temperature and time.
Fig. 5: Oxide surface terminations at the experimental H2 chemical potential (–10.40 kJ mol–1).
Fig. 6: Surface reactivity descriptor.
Fig. 7: Dependence of C–O bond scission reaction rate on the substrate.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots in this paper and other findings are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. DFT-optimized geometries of atomistic models of metal oxide surfaces with adsorbates are included as part of the Supplementary Data Set 1.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based on work supported as part of the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under award no. DE-SC0001004. Portions of this work were performed at the DuPont–Northwestern–Dow Collaborative Access Team (DND-CAT) located at Sector 5 of the APS. DND-CAT is supported by Northwestern University, E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. and The Dow Chemical Company. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a US DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The authors also acknowledge the use of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which is supported by the US DOE, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under contract no. DE-AC02-76SF00515. NSF award no. 1428149 is acknowledged for supporting the XPS instrumentation. We also acknowledge the resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the US DOE under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231 for computational time. Additional computational capacity was supported in part by the Information Technologies resources at the University of Delaware, specifically the high-performance computing resources.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Konstantinos A. Goulas, Alexander V. Mironenko.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Konstantinos A. Goulas, Alexander V. Mironenko, Glen R. Jenness, Tobias Mazal & Dionisios G. Vlachos

  2. School of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Konstantinos A. Goulas

  3. Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Alexander V. Mironenko

  4. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Alexander V. Mironenko, Tobias Mazal & Dionisios G. Vlachos

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Contributions

K.A.G. and T.M. designed and performed all the experimental kinetic studies. K.A.G. designed and performed all characterization studies. A.V.M. developed and analysed the MKMs and introduced a new thermodynamic referencing scheme. A.V.M. performed the ab initio thermodynamics and DFT calculations. G.R.J. assisted with DFT calculations. D.G.V. directed the project and provided guidance for the experimental and theoretical work. The manuscript was written by K.A.G., A.V.M. and D.G.V. with input from all the authors.

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Correspondence to Dionisios G. Vlachos.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–9; Supplementary Figures 1–28; Supplementary Tables 1–18; Supplementary References

Supplementary Dataset 1

DFT-optimized geometries of atomistic models of metal oxide surfaces with adsorbates

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Goulas, K.A., Mironenko, A.V., Jenness, G.R. et al. Fundamentals of C–O bond activation on metal oxide catalysts. Nat Catal 2, 269–276 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41929-019-0234-6

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