Single atom catalysts on amorphous supports: A quenched disorder perspective

Area of Science:

• Catalysis
• Surface Science
• Computational Chemistry

Background:

• Phenomenological models of catalyst sites are established.
• Atomically resolved details of amorphous surfaces and active sites are emerging.
• Understanding active site heterogeneity is key to catalyst design.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a statistical method connecting amorphous surface structures to activation energy distributions.
• To investigate the impact of site structure disorder on catalytic kinetics.
• To guide the identification of highly reactive active sites.

Main Methods:

• Statistical transformation of quenched disorder distributions.
• Analysis of activation energy distributions for amorphous supports.
• Kinetic analysis focusing on the low-energy tail of activation energies.

Main Results:

• A statistical transformation was developed to map site structures to activation energies.
• Catalytic kinetics are highly sensitive to the low-energy tail of the activation energy distribution.
• The distribution of activation energies directly correlates with amorphous surface site structures.

Conclusions:

• The developed statistical method provides a link between surface disorder and catalytic activity.
• Targeting the low-energy tail of activation energies is critical for enhancing catalyst performance.
• Further systematic methods are needed to identify and characterize the most reactive active sites on amorphous supports.