Confined Water for Catalysis: Thermodynamic Properties and Reaction Kinetics

Area of Science:

• Catalysis and reaction engineering
• Physical chemistry
• Materials science

Background:

• Water plays a crucial role in catalytic systems, acting as a reactant, product, or spectator.
• The behavior of confined water differs significantly from bulk water due to local environments.
• Tuning confined water properties offers opportunities to control reaction kinetics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the connection between confined water properties and reaction kinetics in heterogeneous (electro)catalysis.
• To explore how water confinement influences enthalpy, entropy, and dielectric properties.
• To highlight the role of hydrogen-bonding networks in catalytic processes.

Main Methods:

• Review of experimental and computational studies on water-inorganic material interactions.
• Analysis of water confinement in various dimensions (0D, 1D, 2D, 3D).
• Discussion of H-bonding structure and dynamics effects on catalytic parameters.

Main Results:

• Confined water's properties (enthalpy, entropy, dielectric constant) are tunable via cavity geometry and hydrophobicity.
• Unique H-bonding networks can be created in confined water structures.
• Interfacial H-bond networks significantly influence activation free energy and reorganization energy.

Conclusions:

• Optimizing confined water structures and their H-bonding networks is key to enhancing catalytic efficiency.
• This approach offers promising strategies for proton-coupled electron transfer and decarbonization.
• Understanding confined water is essential for advancing heterogeneous (electro)catalysis.