Zeolite Adsorption Free Energies from ab Initio Potentials of Mean Force

The ability of metal-exchanged zeolites to chemisorb small gas molecules is key to their performance as heterogeneous catalysts and gas-separating agents. Here, we propose and evaluate an ab initio potential of mean force (PMF) method for computing adsorption free energies of representative small molecules to Cu-exchanged sites in SSZ-13 zeolite. We show that Cu ions are mobilized by adsorbates and, as a result, computed free energies are significantly more negative than those obtained from a conventional harmonic oscillator model. PMF-derived free energies are consistent with available experiment and, in many cases, with a dynamics-based quasi-harmonic analysis (QHA). The PMF approach avoids the artificial partitioning of degrees of freedom intrinsic to the QHA. On the basis of the PMF results, we propose a simple correlation to estimate free energies from computed adsorption energies and gas-phase entropies.