Zeinalipour-Yazdi, Constantinos D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8388-1549, Hargreaves, Justin S. J. and Catlow, C. Richard A. (2016) DFT-D3 study of molecular N2 and H2 activation on Co3Mo3N surfaces. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 120 (38). pp. 21390-21398. ISSN 1932-7447 (Print), 1932-7447 (Online) (doi:10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b04748)

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Abstract

Cobalt molybdenum nitride (Co3Mo3N) is one of the most active catalysts for ammonia synthesis, although the atomistic details of the reaction mechanism are currently unknown. We present a dispersion-corrected (D3) DFT study of the adsorption and activation of molecular nitrogen and hydrogen on Co3Mo3N-(111) surfaces to identify possible activation sites for ammonia synthesis. H2 was found to adsorb both molecularly on the Mo3N framework and dissociatively on Co8 clusters or Mo3 clusters that were exposed due to N-vacancies. We find that there are two possible activation sites for N2 where both N2 and H2 can coadsorb. The first is a Mo3 triangular cluster that resides at 3f nitrogen vacancies, and the second is a surface cavity where N2 is activated by a Co8 cluster, the second being a more efficient activation site. N2 was found to adsorb in three adsorption configurations: side-on, end-on, and an unusual tilt end-on (155°) configuration, and the existence of these three adsorption configurations is explained via MP2 calculations and the sphere-in-contact model.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	ACS AuthorChoice - This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Co3Mo3N, ammonia synthesis, nitrogen activation, cobalt molybdenum nitride
Subjects:	Q Science > QD Chemistry
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Engineering & Science Faculty of Engineering & Science > School of Science (SCI)
Last Modified:	05 Oct 2018 13:46
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/21480

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