Pathways and kinetics of methane and ethane C-H bond cleavage on PdO(101)

We used conventional density functional theory (DFT) and dispersion-corrected DFT (DFT-D3) calculations to investigate C-H bond activation pathways for methane and ethane sigma-complexes adsorbed on the PdO(101) surface. The DFT-D3 calculations predict lower and more physically realistic values of the apparent C-H bond cleavage barriers, which are defined relative to the gas-phase energy level, while giving nearly the same energy differences between stationary states as predicted by conventional DFT for a given reaction pathway. For the stable CH4 eta(2) complex on PdO(101), DFT-D3 predicts that the C-H bond cleavage barriers are 55.2 and 16.1 kJ/mol relative to the initial molecularly adsorbed and gaseous states, respectively. We also predict that dehydrogenation of the resulting CH3 groups and conversion to CH3O species are significantly more energetically demanding than the initial C-H bond activation of CH4 on PdO(101). Using DFT-D3, we find that an eta(2) and an eta(1) ethane complex can undergo C-H bond cleavage on PdO(101) with intrinsic energy barriers that are similar to that of the methane complex, but with apparent barriers that are close to zero. We also investigated the dissociation kinetics of methane and ethane on PdO(101) using microkinetic models, with parameters derived from the DFT-D3 relaxed structures. We find that a so-called 3N - 2 model, in which two frustrated adsorbate motions are treated as free motions, predicts desorption pre-factors and alkane dissociation probabilities that agree well with estimates obtained from the literature. The microkinetic simulations demonstrate the importance of accurately describing entropic contributions in kinetic simulations of alkane dissociative chemisorption. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.