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Reaction intermediates during operando electrocatalysis identified from full solvent quantum mechanics molecular dynamics.

ABSTRACT: Electrocatalysis provides a powerful means to selectively transform molecules, but a serious impediment in making rapid progress is the lack of a molecular-based understanding of the reactive mechanisms or intermediates at the electrode-electrolyte interface (EEI). Recent experimental techniques have been developed for operando identification of reaction intermediates using surface infrared (IR) and Raman spectroscopy. However, large noises in the experimental spectrum pose great challenges in resolving the atomistic structures of reactive intermediates. To provide an interpretation of these experimental studies and target for additional studies, we report the results from quantum mechanics molecular dynamics (QM-MD) with explicit consideration of solvent, electrode-electrolyte interface, and applied potential at 298 K, which conceptually resemble the operando experimental condition, leading to a prototype of operando QM-MD (o-QM-MD). With o-QM-MD, we characterize 22 possible reactive intermediates in carbon dioxide reduction reactions ([Formula: see text]RRs). Furthermore, we report the vibrational density of states (v-DoSs) of these intermediates from two-phase thermodynamic (2PT) analysis. Accordingly, we identify important intermediates such as chemisorbed [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]), *HOC-COH, *C-CH, and *C-COH in our o-QM-MD likely to explain the experimental spectrum. Indeed, we assign the experimental peak at 1,191 cm^-1 to the mode of C-O stretch in *HOC-COH predicted at 1,189 cm^-1 and the experimental peak at 1,584 cm^-1 to the mode of C-C stretch in *C-COD predicted at 1,581 cm^-1 Interestingly, we find that surface ketene (*C=C=O), arising from *HOC-COH dehydration, also shows signals at around 1,584 cm^-1, which indicates a nonelectrochemical pathway of hydrocarbon formation at low overpotential and high pH conditions.

SUBMITTER: Cheng T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6475413 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Reaction intermediates during operando electrocatalysis identified from full solvent quantum mechanics molecular dynamics.

Cheng Tao T Fortunelli Alessandro A Goddard William A WA

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20190313 16

Electrocatalysis provides a powerful means to selectively transform molecules, but a serious impediment in making rapid progress is the lack of a molecular-based understanding of the reactive mechanisms or intermediates at the electrode-electrolyte interface (EEI). Recent experimental techniques have been developed for operando identification of reaction intermediates using surface infrared (IR) and Raman spectroscopy. However, large noises in the experimental spectrum pose great challenges in r ...[more]

PMID: 30867281

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Project description:Direct molecular dynamics (MD) simulation with ab initio quantum mechanical and molecular mechanical (QM/MM) methods is very powerful for studying the mechanism of chemical reactions in a complex environment but also very time-consuming. The computational cost of QM/MM calculations during MD simulations can be reduced significantly using semiempirical QM/MM methods with lower accuracy. To achieve higher accuracy at the ab initio QM/MM level, a correction on the existing semiempirical QM/MM model is an attractive idea. Recently, we reported a neural network (NN) method as QM/MM-NN to predict the potential energy difference between semiempirical and ab initio QM/MM approaches. The high-level results can be obtained using neural network based on semiempirical QM/MM MD simulations, but the lack of direct MD samplings at the ab initio QM/MM level is still a deficiency that limits the applications of QM/MM-NN. In the present paper, we developed a dynamic scheme of QM/MM-NN for direct MD simulations on the NN-predicted potential energy surface to approximate ab initio QM/MM MD. Since some configurations excluded from the database for NN training were encountered during simulations, which may cause some difficulties on MD samplings, an adaptive procedure inspired by the selection scheme reported by Behler [ Behler Int. J. Quantum Chem. 2015 , 115 , 1032 ; Behler Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 2017 , 56 , 12828 ] was employed with some adaptions to update NN and carry out MD iteratively. We further applied the adaptive QM/MM-NN MD method to the free energy calculation and transition path optimization on chemical reactions in water. The results at the ab initio QM/MM level can be well reproduced using this method after 2-4 iteration cycles. The saving in computational cost is about 2 orders of magnitude. It demonstrates that the QM/MM-NN with direct MD simulations has great potentials not only for the calculation of thermodynamic properties but also for the characterization of reaction dynamics, which provides a useful tool to study chemical or biochemical systems in solution or enzymes.

Dataset Information

Reaction intermediates during operando electrocatalysis identified from full solvent quantum mechanics molecular dynamics.

Publications

Reaction intermediates during operando electrocatalysis identified from full solvent quantum mechanics molecular dynamics.

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