(686g) The Chemisorption Scaling of CO2R Intermediates on Carbon Nanotube Surfaces with High-Curvature
AIChE Annual Meeting
2019
2019 AIChE Annual Meeting
Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division
Electrochemical CO2 Reduction I: Fuels
Thursday, November 14, 2019 - 2:18pm to 2:36pm
Chemisorption scaling relationships are often used in the field of catalysis to understand the energetics and kinetics of surface reactions across different materials. Thus far, the relationships generally focus on the noble transition metal elements. To aid the search of new catalytic materials, a better understanding in scaling relations across materials outside the noble transition metals is needed. In this paper, we studied the chemisorption of intermediates pertinent to CO2R and CO reduction on highly curved nanotubes and discuss their feasibility as electrocatalytic surfaces. We find that ultra-thin nanotubes of around 0.4nm are required for key intermediates, like CO, to adsorb favorably on the undoped outer carbon surface. Nitrogen and Boron doping was found to improve the chemisorption properties of intermediates. The density of states of the nanotubes were found to be less helpful in determining chemisorption properties, rather, a simple bond order approach is adequate for elucidating the key insights of scaling behaviors across all nanotube systems.