Unraveling surface structures of gallium promoted transition metal catalysts in CO2 hydrogenation

Si Woo Lee, Mauricio Lopez Luna, Nikolay Berdunov, Weiming Wan, Sebastian Kunze, Shamil Shaikhutdinov () and Beatriz Roldan Cuenya
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Si Woo Lee: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society
Mauricio Lopez Luna: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society
Nikolay Berdunov: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society
Weiming Wan: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society
Sebastian Kunze: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society
Shamil Shaikhutdinov: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society
Beatriz Roldan Cuenya: Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Gallium-containing alloys have recently been reported to hydrogenate CO2 to methanol at ambient pressures. However, a full understanding of the Ga-promoted catalysts is still missing due to the lack of information about the surface structures formed under reaction conditions. Here, we employed near ambient pressure scanning tunneling microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to monitor the evolution of well-defined Cu-Ga surfaces during CO2 hydrogenation. We show the formation of two-dimensional Ga(III) oxide islands embedded into the Cu surface in the reaction atmosphere. The islands are a few atomic layers in thickness and considerably differ from bulk Ga2O3 polymorphs. Such a complex structure, which could not be determined with conventional characterization methods on powder catalysts, should be used for elucidating the reaction mechanism on the Ga-promoted metal catalysts.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40361-3

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