期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2017
卷号：114
期号：8
页码：1795-1800
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1612106114
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：A critical step toward the rational design of new catalysts that achieve selective and efficient reduction of CO2 to specific hydrocarbons and oxygenates is to determine the detailed reaction mechanism including kinetics and product selectivity as a function of pH and applied potential for known systems. To accomplish this, we apply ab initio molecular metadynamics simulations (AIMμD) for the water/Cu(100) system with five layers of the explicit solvent under a potential of −0.59 V [reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE)] at pH 7 and compare with experiment. From these free-energy calculations, we determined the kinetics and pathways for major products (ethylene and methane) and minor products (ethanol, glyoxal, glycolaldehyde, ethylene glycol, acetaldehyde, ethane, and methanol). For an applied potential ( U ) greater than −0.6 V (RHE) ethylene, the major product, is produced via the Eley–Rideal (ER) mechanism using H2O + e –. The rate-determining step (RDS) is C–C coupling of two CO, with Δ G ‡ = 0.69 eV. For an applied potential less than −0.60 V (RHE), the rate of ethylene formation decreases, mainly due to the loss of CO surface sites, which are replaced by H*. The reappearance of C2H4 along with CH4 at U less than −0.85 V arises from *CHO formation produced via an ER process of H* with nonadsorbed CO (a unique result). This *CHO is the common intermediate for the formation of both CH4 and C2H4. These results suggest that, to obtain hydrocarbon products selectively and efficiency at pH 7, we need to increase the CO concentration by changing the solvent or alloying the surface.
