Ab Initio Thermodynamic Modeling of Electrified Metal–Oxide Interfaces: Consistent Treatment of Electronic and Ionic Chemical Potentials

Solid oxide fuel cells are attractive devices in a sustainable energy context because of their fuel flexibility and potentially highly efficient conversion of chemical to electrical energy. The performance of the device is to a large extent determined by the atomic structure of the electrode–electrolyte interface. Lack of atomic-level information about the interface has limited the fundamental understanding, which further limits the opportunity for optimization. The atomic structure of the interface is affected by electrode potential, chemical potential of oxygen ions, temperature, and gas pressures. In this paper we present a scheme to determine the metal–oxide interface structure at a given set of these environmental parameters based on quantum chemical calculations. As an illustration we determine the structure of a Ni-YSZ anode as a function of electrode potential at 0 and 1000 K. We further describe how the structural information can be used as a starting point for accurate calculations of the kinetics of fuel oxidation reactions, in particular the hydrogen oxidation reaction. More generally, we anticipate that the scheme will be a valuable theoretical tool to describe solid–solid electrochemical interfaces

Electrochemical CO₂ and CO Reduction on Metal-Functionalized Porphyrin-like Graphene

Porphyrin-like metal-functionalized graphene structures have been investigated as possible catalysts for CO₂ and CO reduction to methane or methanol. The late transition metals (Cu, Ag, Au, Ni, Pd, Pt, Co, Rh, Ir, Fe, Ru, Os) and some p (B, Al, Ga) and s (Mg) metals comprised the center of the porphyrin ring. A clear difference in catalytic properties compared to extended metal surfaces was observed owing to a different electronic nature of the active site. The preference to bind hydrogen, however, becomes a major obstacle in the reaction path. A possible solution to this problem is to reduce CO instead of CO₂. Volcano plots were constructed on the basis of scaling relations of reaction intermediates, and from these plots the reaction steps with the highest overpotentials were deduced. The Rh–porphyrin-like functionalized graphene was identified as the most active catalyst for producing methanol from CO, featuring an overpotential of 0.22 V. Additionally, we have also examined the hydrogen evolution and oxidation reaction, and in their case, too, Rh–porphyrin turned out to be the best catalyst with an overpotential of 0.15 V