Interfacial and Alloying Effects on Activation of Ethanol from First-Principles

Abstract

We present a first-principles density-functional theory study of ethanol activation at oxide/Rh(111) interface and the alloying effect on mitigating carbon deposition, which are essential to direct ethanol fuel cell (DEFC) anode reaction and steam reforming of ethanol (SRE) reaction. Our calculated results show that charge can transfer from Rh(111) substrate to MOx chain (e.g., MoO3 and MnO2), or from MOx chain (e.g., MgO, SnO2, ZrO2, and TiO2) to Rh(111) substrate. The OH-binding strength is increased exponentially with Mδ+ charge ranging from 1.4 to 2.2, which renders MnO2/Rh(111) and MgO/Rh(111) interfaces weaker OH-binding, and thereby enhanced oxidizing functionality of OH* for promoting ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) at DEFC anode. For efficient C–C bond breaking, a large number of Rh ensemble sizes are critically needed at the interface of MOx/Rh(111). We found that Rh1Au3 near surface alloy has the weakest C* and CO* binding, followed by Rh1Cu3 and Rh1Pd3 near surface alloys, while Rh1Ir3 and Rh...