Computational Screening of Supported Metal Oxide Nanoclusters for Methane Activation: Insights into Homolytic versus Heterolytic C–H Bond Dissociation

Abstract

Since its discovery in zeolites, the [CuOCu]2+ motif has played an important role in our understanding of selective methane activation over supported metal oxide nanoclusters. Although there are two known C-H bond dissociation mechanisms, namely, homolytic and heterolytic cleavage, most computational studies on optimizing metal oxide nanoclusters for improved methane activation reactivity have focused only on the homolytic mechanism. In this work, both mechanisms were examined for a set of 21 mixed metal oxide complexes of the form of [M1OM2]2+ (M1 and M2 = Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, and Zn). Except for pure copper, heterolytic cleavage was found to be the dominant C-H bond activation pathway for all systems. Furthermore, mixed systems including [CuOMn]2+, [CuONi]2+, and [CuOZn]2+ are predicted to possess methane activation activity similar to pure [CuOCu]2+. These results suggest that both homolytic and heterolytic mechanisms should be considered in computing methane activation energies on supported metal oxide nanoclusters.