Dehydrogenation Selectivity of Ethanol on Close-Packed Transition Metal Surfaces: A Computational Study of Monometallic, Pd/Au, and Rh/Au Catalysts

Ethanol (EtOH) decomposition has been widely studied in recent years. However, the initial dehydrogenation selectivity on catalytic surfaces, which plays a crucial role in EtOH partial oxidation and steam reforming, is not well understood. Here, density functional theory (DFT) was used to calculate the initial dehydrogenation selectivities of EtOH on monometallic and X/Au (X = Pd and Rh) close-packed surfaces. The energy for the initial bond scissions of O–H and α- and β-C–H were calculated on each surface. The binding energy of EtOH is found to be a good reactivity descriptor for the scission of O–H and β-C–H bonds, while the binding energy of CH 3 CHOH is a good reaction descriptor for α-C–H bond scission. The scaling relationships between the activation energy barriers and binding energies on Pd/Au and Rh/Au surface alloys are significantly different from those of monometallic surfaces. Additionally, the specific atomic ensembles on the Pd/Au and Rh/Au surfaces have different initial dehydrogenation selectivities of EtOH. Our calculated scaling relationships were used to construct contour plots that provide predictive trends for the selectivity of the initial EtOH dehydrogenation. We conclude that the presence of specific atomic ensembles on the surface of alloy catalysts can efficiently control the reaction products of EtOH dehydrogenation.