Development of molecular cluster models to probe pyrite surface reactivity

The recent discovery that anaerobic methanogens can reductively dissolve pyrite and utilize dissolution products as a source of iron and sulfur to meet their biosynthetic demands for these elements prompted the development of atomic-scale nanoparticle models, as maquettes of reactive surface sites, for describing the fundamental redox steps that take place at the mineral surface during reduction. The given report describes our computational approach for modeling n(FeS₂ ) nanoparticles originated from mineral bulk structure. These maquettes contain a comprehensive set of coordinatively unsaturated Fe^(II) sites that are connected via a range of persulfide (S₂ ^2- ) ligation. In addition to the specific maquettes with n = 8, 18, and 32 FeS₂ units, we established guidelines for obtaining low-energy structures by considering the pattern of ionic, covalent, and magnetic interactions among the metal and ligand sites. The developed models serve as computational nano-reactors that can be used to describe the reductive dissolution mechanism of pyrite to better understand the reactive sites on the mineral, where microbial extracellular electron-transfer reactions can occur.