Hydrogen and methoxy coadsorption in the computation of the catalytic conversion of methanol on the ceria (111) surface

Abstract

Methanol decomposition to formaldehyde catalyzed by the ceria (111) surface was investigated using the DFT+U method. Our results rationalize experimental temperature programmed desorption experiments on the fully oxidized surface. Particular attention was paid to the effect of coadsorption of methoxy and hydrogen on various aspects of the conversion process. This issue had been raised by the experimental observation of water desorption at low temperature removing hydrogen from the system. Within this context, we also investigated hydrogen diffusion on the ceria surface. The hydrogen/methoxy interaction on ceria was shown to be ionic regardless of separation distance. The barrier for dehydrogenation of methoxy using the ionic model system, where hydrogen is coadsorbed, is above 1eV. This barrier becomes negligible if an incorrect neutral model without coadsorbed hydrogen is employed. While water formation from isolated surface hydrogen is unlikely at low temperature, the presence of coadsorbed methoxy reduces the reaction energy for water formation considerably. For the dehydrated surface, we observed that the preference of the electron to locate at the methoxy oxygen instead of the cerium atom results in a surface that does not contain Ce3+ ions, despite the existence of a vacancy.