DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Influence of Van der Waals Interactions on the Solvation Energies of Adsorbates at Pt-Based Electrocatalysts

Abstract

Solvation can significantly modify the adsorption energy of species at surfaces, thereby influencing the performance of electrocatalysts and liquid-phase catalysts. Thus, it is important to understand adsorbate solvation at the nanoscale. Here we evaluate the effect of van der Waals (vdW) interactions described by different approaches on the solvation energy of *OH adsorbed on near-surface alloys (NSAs) of Pt. Our results show that the studied functionals can be divided into two groups, each with rather similar average *OH solvation energies: (1) PBE and PW91; and (2) vdW functionals, RPBE, PBE-D3 and RPBE-D3. On average, *OH solvation energies are less negative by ~0.14 eV in group (2) compared to (1), and the values for a given alloy can be extrapolated from one functional to another within the same group. Depending on the desired level of accuracy, these concrete observations and our tabulated values can be used to rapidly incorporate solvation into models for electrocatalysis and liquid-phase catalysis.

Authors:
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [3]
  1. Leiden Univ. (Netherlands)
  2. Univ. EAFIT, Medellín (Colombia)
  3. Univ. de Barcelona (Spain)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); Ramón y Cajal; Units of Excellence María de Maeztu; Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO); European Union (EU)
OSTI Identifier:
1623518
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC0012704; RYC-2015-18996; MDM-2017-0767
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
ChemPhysChem
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 20; Journal Issue: 22; Journal ID: ISSN 1439-4235
Publisher:
ChemPubSoc Europe
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY; 71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; chemistry; physics; adsorbate solvation; density functional theory; near-surface alloys; oxygen reduction reaction; platinum

Citation Formats

Granda‐Marulanda, Laura P., Builes, Santiago, Koper, Marc T. M., and Calle‐Vallejo, Federico. Influence of Van der Waals Interactions on the Solvation Energies of Adsorbates at Pt-Based Electrocatalysts. United States: N. p., 2019. Web. doi:10.1002/cphc.201900512.
Granda‐Marulanda, Laura P., Builes, Santiago, Koper, Marc T. M., & Calle‐Vallejo, Federico. Influence of Van der Waals Interactions on the Solvation Energies of Adsorbates at Pt-Based Electrocatalysts. United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/cphc.201900512
Granda‐Marulanda, Laura P., Builes, Santiago, Koper, Marc T. M., and Calle‐Vallejo, Federico. Fri . "Influence of Van der Waals Interactions on the Solvation Energies of Adsorbates at Pt-Based Electrocatalysts". United States. https://doi.org/10.1002/cphc.201900512. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1623518.
@article{osti_1623518,
title = {Influence of Van der Waals Interactions on the Solvation Energies of Adsorbates at Pt-Based Electrocatalysts},
author = {Granda‐Marulanda, Laura P. and Builes, Santiago and Koper, Marc T. M. and Calle‐Vallejo, Federico},
abstractNote = {Solvation can significantly modify the adsorption energy of species at surfaces, thereby influencing the performance of electrocatalysts and liquid-phase catalysts. Thus, it is important to understand adsorbate solvation at the nanoscale. Here we evaluate the effect of van der Waals (vdW) interactions described by different approaches on the solvation energy of *OH adsorbed on near-surface alloys (NSAs) of Pt. Our results show that the studied functionals can be divided into two groups, each with rather similar average *OH solvation energies: (1) PBE and PW91; and (2) vdW functionals, RPBE, PBE-D3 and RPBE-D3. On average, *OH solvation energies are less negative by ~0.14 eV in group (2) compared to (1), and the values for a given alloy can be extrapolated from one functional to another within the same group. Depending on the desired level of accuracy, these concrete observations and our tabulated values can be used to rapidly incorporate solvation into models for electrocatalysis and liquid-phase catalysis.},
doi = {10.1002/cphc.201900512},
journal = {ChemPhysChem},
number = 22,
volume = 20,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Jul 26 00:00:00 EDT 2019},
month = {Fri Jul 26 00:00:00 EDT 2019}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 14 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Figures / Tables:

Figure 1 Figure 1: Schematics of Equations 1 and 2 for the free energies of formation of *OH on Pt NSAs. (a) 1/3 ML *OH coadsorbed with 1/3 ML *H2O (right side) using as a reference a water bilayer (left side) with one water molecule parallel to the surface plane and themore » other one with a hydrogen atom pointing towards the surface. (b) 1/3 ML *OH in vacuum (right side) using liquid water as a reference (left side). In both cases the slabs are 2 x 2 repetitions of a (111) $\sqrt{3}$ x $\sqrt{3}$ R30° supercell defined by the yellow dashed lines. Each layer in the slab contains 3 metal atoms. Pt: gray, subsurface metal: green, O in H2O: red, O in OH: purple, H: white. Top and side views of the water adlayer are shown in Figure S3.« less

Save / Share:

Works referenced in this record:

Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple
journal, October 1996

  • Perdew, John P.; Burke, Kieron; Ernzerhof, Matthias
  • Physical Review Letters, Vol. 77, Issue 18, p. 3865-3868
  • DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.77.3865

Improving accuracy of electrochemical capacitance and solvation energetics in first-principles calculations
journal, April 2018

  • Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Letchworth-Weaver, Kendra; Schwarz, Kathleen A.
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 148, Issue 14
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.5024219

Hydrolysis of Electrolyte Cations Enhances the Electrochemical Reduction of CO 2 over Ag and Cu
journal, September 2016

  • Singh, Meenesh R.; Kwon, Youngkook; Lum, Yanwei
  • Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 138, Issue 39
  • DOI: 10.1021/jacs.6b07612

Near-surface alloys for hydrogen fuel cell applications
journal, January 2006


Chemically Accurate Simulation of a Prototypical Surface Reaction: H2 Dissociation on Cu(111)
journal, November 2009


Establishing the Accuracy of Broadly Used Density Functionals in Describing Bulk Properties of Transition Metals
journal, February 2013

  • Janthon, Patanachai; Kozlov, Sergey M.; Viñes, Francesc
  • Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Vol. 9, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1021/ct3010326

Initial stages of water solvation of stepped platinum surfaces
journal, January 2016

  • Kolb, Manuel J.; Wermink, Jasper; Calle-Vallejo, Federico
  • Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Vol. 18, Issue 5
  • DOI: 10.1039/C5CP04468E

Self-consistent continuum solvation (SCCS): The case of charged systems
journal, December 2013

  • Dupont, C.; Andreussi, O.; Marzari, N.
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 139, Issue 21
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4832475

From ultrasoft pseudopotentials to the projector augmented-wave method
journal, January 1999


Accounting for Bifurcating Pathways in the Screening for CO 2 Reduction Catalysts
journal, September 2017


Chemical accuracy for the van der Waals density functional
journal, December 2009

  • Klimeš, Jiří; Bowler, David R.; Michaelides, Angelos
  • Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 22, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1088/0953-8984/22/2/022201

Elucidation of the Electrochemical Activation of Water over Pd by First Principles
journal, January 2006


Solvation Effects for Oxygen Evolution Reaction Catalysis on IrO 2 (110)
journal, May 2017

  • Gauthier, Joseph A.; Dickens, Colin F.; Chen, Leanne D.
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Vol. 121, Issue 21
  • DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.7b02383

Molecular and solid-state tests of density functional approximations: LSD, GGAs, and meta-GGAs
journal, January 1999


Tailoring the catalytic activity of electrodes with monolayer amounts of foreign metals
journal, January 2013

  • Calle-Vallejo, Federico; Koper, Marc T. M.; Bandarenka, Aliaksandr S.
  • Chemical Society Reviews, Vol. 42, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1039/c3cs60026b

Evaluating continuum solvation models for the electrode-electrolyte interface: Challenges and strategies for improvement
journal, February 2017

  • Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Schwarz, Kathleen
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 146, Issue 8
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4976971

Nonequivalence of the generalized gradient approximations PBE and PW91
journal, May 2006


Density functionals for surface science: Exchange-correlation model development with Bayesian error estimation
journal, June 2012


The oxygen reduction reaction mechanism on Pt(111) from density functional theory calculations
journal, November 2010


Grand-canonical approach to density functional theory of electrocatalytic systems: Thermodynamics of solid-liquid interfaces at constant ion and electrode potentials
journal, January 2019

  • Melander, Marko M.; Kuisma, Mikael J.; Christensen, Thorbjørn Erik Køppen
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 150, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.5047829

A consistent and accurate ab initio parametrization of density functional dispersion correction (DFT-D) for the 94 elements H-Pu
journal, April 2010

  • Grimme, Stefan; Antony, Jens; Ehrlich, Stephan
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 132, Issue 15
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.3382344

Parallel Nanoimprint Forming of One-Dimensional Chiral Semiconductor for Strain-Engineered Optical Properties
journal, August 2020


Product Selectivity Affected by Cationic Species in Electrochemical Reduction of CO 2 and CO at a Cu Electrode
journal, January 1991

  • Murata, Akira; Hori, Yoshio
  • Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan, Vol. 64, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1246/bcsj.64.123

How covalence breaks adsorption-energy scaling relations and solvation restores them
journal, January 2017

  • Calle-Vallejo, Federico; Krabbe, Alexander; García-Lastra, Juan M.
  • Chemical Science, Vol. 8, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1039/C6SC02123A

Multigrid-Based Methodology for Implicit Solvation Models in Periodic DFT
journal, February 2016

  • Garcia-Ratés, Miquel; López, Núria
  • Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Vol. 12, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.5b00949

Implicit solvation model for density-functional study of nanocrystal surfaces and reaction pathways
journal, February 2014

  • Mathew, Kiran; Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Letchworth-Weaver, Kendra
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 140, Issue 8
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4865107

Elucidation of the Electrochemical Activation of Water over Pd by First Principles
journal, January 2006

  • Filhol, Jean-Sébastien; Neurock, Matthew
  • Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Vol. 45, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1002/anie.200502540

Interfacial water reorganization as a pH-dependent descriptor of the hydrogen evolution rate on platinum electrodes
journal, March 2017

  • Ledezma-Yanez, Isis; Wallace, W. David Z.; Sebastián-Pascual, Paula
  • Nature Energy, Vol. 2, Issue 4
  • DOI: 10.1038/nenergy.2017.31

Generalized gradient approximation for the exchange-correlation hole of a many-electron system
journal, December 1996


Making the hydrogen evolution reaction in polymer electrolyte membrane electrolysers even faster
journal, March 2016

  • Tymoczko, Jakub; Calle-Vallejo, Federico; Schuhmann, Wolfgang
  • Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10990

Oxygen Electroreduction at High-Index Pt Electrodes in Alkaline Electrolytes: A Decisive Role of the Alkali Metal Cations
journal, November 2018


Importance of Solvation for the Accurate Prediction of Oxygen Reduction Activities of Pt-Based Electrocatalysts
journal, May 2017

  • He, Zheng-Da; Hanselman, Selwyn; Chen, Yan-Xia
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, Vol. 8, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b01018

Solvent–Adsorbate Interactions and Adsorbate-Specific Solvent Structure in Carbon Dioxide Reduction on a Stepped Cu Surface
journal, February 2019

  • Ludwig, Thomas; Gauthier, Joseph A.; Brown, Kristopher S.
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Vol. 123, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b11571

Computational Screening of Near-Surface Alloys for CO 2 Electroreduction
journal, March 2018


pH and Alkali Cation Effects on the Pt Cyclic Voltammogram Explained Using Density Functional Theory
journal, December 2015

  • McCrum, Ian T.; Janik, Michael J.
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Vol. 120, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.5b10979

Catalytic Water Formation on Platinum:  A First-Principles Study
journal, May 2001

  • Michaelides, A.; Hu, P.
  • Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 123, Issue 18
  • DOI: 10.1021/ja003576x

Structure- and Potential-Dependent Cation Effects on CO Reduction at Copper Single-Crystal Electrodes
journal, November 2017

  • Pérez-Gallent, Elena; Marcandalli, Giulia; Figueiredo, Marta Costa
  • Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 139, Issue 45
  • DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b10142

Capturing Solvation Effects at a Liquid/Nanoparticle Interface by Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics: Pt 201 Immersed in Water
journal, August 2016

  • de Morais, Rodrigo Ferreira; Kerber, Torsten; Calle-Vallejo, Federico
  • Small, Vol. 12, Issue 38
  • DOI: 10.1002/smll.201601307

Efficient iterative schemes for ab initio total-energy calculations using a plane-wave basis set
journal, October 1996


Toward an Atomic-Scale Understanding of Electrochemical Interface Structure and Dynamics
journal, February 2019

  • Magnussen, Olaf M.; Groß, Axel
  • Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 141, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b13188

Understanding the electrocatalysis of oxygen reduction on platinum and its alloys
journal, January 2012

  • Stephens, Ifan E. L.; Bondarenko, Alexander S.; Grønbjerg, Ulrik
  • Energy & Environmental Science, Vol. 5, Issue 5
  • DOI: 10.1039/c2ee03590a

Formic acid oxidation on platinum: a simple mechanistic study
journal, January 2015

  • Schwarz, Kathleen A.; Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Moffat, Thomas P.
  • Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Vol. 17, Issue 32
  • DOI: 10.1039/C5CP03045E

Van der Waals Density Functional for General Geometries
journal, June 2004


Affordable Estimation of Solvation Contributions to the Adsorption Energies of Oxygenates on Metal Nanoparticles
journal, February 2019

  • Calle-Vallejo, Federico; F. de Morais, Rodrigo; Illas, Francesc
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Vol. 123, Issue 9
  • DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b01211

Enabling Generalized Coordination Numbers to Describe Strain Effects
journal, May 2018

  • Calle-Vallejo, Federico; Bandarenka, Aliaksandr S.
  • ChemSusChem, Vol. 11, Issue 11
  • DOI: 10.1002/cssc.201800569

Density functional theory study of the electrochemical interface between a Pt electrode and an aqueous electrolyte using an implicit solvent method
journal, June 2015

  • Sakong, Sung; Naderian, Maryam; Mathew, Kiran
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 142, Issue 23
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4922615

Influence of Alkali Metal Cations on the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Activity of Pt, Ir, Au, and Ag Electrodes in Alkaline Electrolytes
journal, June 2018

  • Xue, Song; Garlyyev, Batyr; Watzele, Sebastian
  • ChemElectroChem, Vol. 5, Issue 17
  • DOI: 10.1002/celc.201800690

Reducing Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and field-free spin-orbit torque switching in synthetic antiferromagnets
journal, May 2021


Mechanism of Oxygen Reduction Reaction on Pt(111) in Alkaline Solution: Importance of Chemisorbed Water on Surface
journal, July 2016

  • Liu, Shizhong; White, Michael G.; Liu, Ping
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Vol. 120, Issue 28
  • DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b05126

Implanting Ni-O-VOx sites into Cu-doped Ni for low-overpotential alkaline hydrogen evolution
journal, June 2020


Quantifying solvation energies at solid/liquid interfaces using continuum solvation methods
journal, January 2017


The role of van der Waals forces in water adsorption on metals
journal, January 2013

  • Carrasco, Javier; Klimeš, Jiří; Michaelides, Angelos
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 138, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4773901

Origin of the Overpotential for Oxygen Reduction at a Fuel-Cell Cathode
journal, November 2004

  • Nørskov, J. K.; Rossmeisl, J.; Logadottir, A.
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Vol. 108, Issue 46
  • DOI: 10.1021/jp047349j

Number of outer electrons as descriptor for adsorption processes on transition metals and their oxides
journal, January 2013

  • Calle-Vallejo, Federico; Inoglu, Nilay G.; Su, Hai-Yan
  • Chemical Science, Vol. 4, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1039/c2sc21601a

Properties of metal–water interfaces studied from first principles
journal, December 2009


Establishing and Understanding Adsorption–Energy Scaling Relations with Negative Slopes
journal, November 2016


Tuning the Catalytic Activity and Selectivity of Cu for CO 2 Electroreduction in the Presence of Halides
journal, February 2016


Chemical accuracy for the van der Waals density functional
preprint, January 2009


The role of van der Waals forces in water adsorption on metals
text, January 2013


Enabling Generalized Coordination Numbers to Describe Strain Effects
journal, May 2018

  • Calle-Vallejo, Federico; Bandarenka, Aliaksandr S.
  • ChemSusChem, Vol. 11, Issue 11
  • DOI: 10.1002/cssc.201800569

Multigrid-Based Methodology for Implicit Solvation Models in Periodic DFT
journal, February 2016

  • Garcia-Ratés, Miquel; López, Núria
  • Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Vol. 12, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.5b00949

Establishing and Understanding Adsorption–Energy Scaling Relations with Negative Slopes
journal, November 2016


Importance of Solvation for the Accurate Prediction of Oxygen Reduction Activities of Pt-Based Electrocatalysts
journal, May 2017

  • He, Zheng-Da; Hanselman, Selwyn; Chen, Yan-Xia
  • The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, Vol. 8, Issue 10
  • DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b01018

Establishing the Accuracy of Broadly Used Density Functionals in Describing Bulk Properties of Transition Metals
journal, February 2013

  • Janthon, Patanachai; Kozlov, Sergey M.; Viñes, Francesc
  • Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Vol. 9, Issue 3
  • DOI: 10.1021/ct3010326

Catalytic Water Formation on Platinum:  A First-Principles Study
journal, May 2001

  • Michaelides, A.; Hu, P.
  • Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 123, Issue 18
  • DOI: 10.1021/ja003576x

Structure- and Potential-Dependent Cation Effects on CO Reduction at Copper Single-Crystal Electrodes
journal, November 2017

  • Pérez-Gallent, Elena; Marcandalli, Giulia; Figueiredo, Marta Costa
  • Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 139, Issue 45
  • DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b10142

Toward an Atomic-Scale Understanding of Electrochemical Interface Structure and Dynamics
journal, February 2019

  • Magnussen, Olaf M.; Groß, Axel
  • Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol. 141, Issue 12
  • DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b13188

Making the hydrogen evolution reaction in polymer electrolyte membrane electrolysers even faster
journal, March 2016

  • Tymoczko, Jakub; Calle-Vallejo, Federico; Schuhmann, Wolfgang
  • Nature Communications, Vol. 7, Issue 1
  • DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10990

Alkali cation specific adsorption onto fcc(111) transition metal electrodes
journal, January 2014

  • Mills, J. N.; McCrum, I. T.; Janik, M. J.
  • Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., Vol. 16, Issue 27
  • DOI: 10.1039/c4cp00760c

Thermodynamic assessment of the oxygen reduction activity in aqueous solutions
journal, January 2017

  • Tripkovic, Vladimir
  • Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Vol. 19, Issue 43
  • DOI: 10.1039/c7cp05448c

A consistent and accurate ab initio parametrization of density functional dispersion correction (DFT-D) for the 94 elements H-Pu
journal, April 2010

  • Grimme, Stefan; Antony, Jens; Ehrlich, Stephan
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 132, Issue 15
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.3382344

Self-consistent continuum solvation (SCCS): The case of charged systems
journal, December 2013

  • Dupont, C.; Andreussi, O.; Marzari, N.
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 139, Issue 21
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4832475

Improving accuracy of electrochemical capacitance and solvation energetics in first-principles calculations
journal, April 2018

  • Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Letchworth-Weaver, Kendra; Schwarz, Kathleen A.
  • The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 148, Issue 14
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.5024219

Chemical accuracy for the van der Waals density functional
journal, December 2009

  • Klimeš, Jiří; Bowler, David R.; Michaelides, Angelos
  • Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, Vol. 22, Issue 2
  • DOI: 10.1088/0953-8984/22/2/022201

Physical and Chemical Nature of the Scaling Relations between Adsorption Energies of Atoms on Metal Surfaces
journal, March 2012


Structure and Bonding of Water on Pt(111)
journal, December 2002


General Model for Water Monomer Adsorption on Close-Packed Transition and Noble Metal Surfaces
journal, May 2003


The role of van der Waals forces in water adsorption on metals
text, January 2013


Implicit solvation model for density-functional study of nanocrystal surfaces and reaction pathways
text, January 2013


Works referencing / citing this record:

Adsorption processes on a Pd monolayer-modified Pt(111) electrode
journal, January 2020

  • Chen, Xiaoting; Granda-Marulanda, Laura P.; McCrum, Ian T.
  • Chemical Science, Vol. 11, Issue 6
  • DOI: 10.1039/c9sc05307g

Figures/Tables have been extracted from DOE-funded journal article accepted manuscripts.