• Clayborne, Andre
• Jacobsen, Karsten Wedel
• Abild-Pedersen, Frank
• Zeng, Zhenhua
• Nørskov, Jens Kehlet
• Kleis, Jesper
• Li, Lin
• Chun, Hee-Joon
• Greeley, Jeffrey Philip
• Larsen, Ask Hjorth
• Romero, Nichols
• Rankin, Rees

Abstract

Periodic Density Functional Theory calculations are capable of providing powerful insights into the structural, energetics, and electronic phenomena that underlie heterogeneous catalysis on transition metal nanoparticles. Such calculations are now routinely applied to single crystal metal surfaces and to subnanometer metal clusters. Descriptions of catalysis on truly nanosized structures, however, are generally not as well developed. In this talk, I will illustrate different approaches to analyzing nanocatalytic phenomena with DFT calculations. I will describe case studies from heterogeneous catalysis and electrocatalysis, in which single crystal models are combined with Wulff construction-based ideas to produce descriptions of average nanocatalyst behavior. Then, I will proceed to describe explicitly DFT-based descriptions of catalysis on truly nanosized particles (<~4 nm in diameter), and I will lay out simple criteria which may be used to determine when unsupported nanoparticles may be described by corresponding single crystal calculations.

Topics

• nanoparticle
• density
• surface
• cluster
• single crystal
• theory
• density functional theory