Ab Initio Investigation of CO2 Adsorption on 13-Atom 4d Clusters

In this work, we report an ab initio investigation based on density functional theory calculations within van der Waals D3 corrections to investigate the adsorption properties and activation of CO2 on transition-metal (TM) 13-atom clusters (TM = Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag), which is a key step for the development of subnano catalysts for the conversion of CO2 to high-value products. From our analyses, which include calculations of several properties and the Spearman correlation analysis, we found that CO2 adopts two distinct structures on the selected TM13 clusters, namely, a bent CO2 configuration in which the OCO angle is about 125 to 150° (chemisorption), which is the lowest energy CO2/TM13 configuration for TM = Ru, Rh, Pd. As in the gas phase, the linear CO2 structure yields the lowest energy for CO2/Ag13 and several higher energy configurations for TM = Ru, Rh, Pd. The bent CO2 (activated) is driven by a chemisorption CO2-TM13 interaction due to the charge transfer from the TM13 clusters toward CO2, while a weak physisorption interaction is obtained for the linear CO2 on the TM13 clusters. Thus, the CO2 activation occurs only in the first case and it is driven by charge transfer from the TM13 clusters to the CO2 molecule (i.e., CO2-δ), which is confirmed by our Bader charge analysis and vibrational frequencies.