Molybdenum Carbide: Controlling the Geometric and Electronic Structure of Noble Metals for the Activation of O–H and C–H Bonds

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.accounts.9b00182
• Publication Date: 2019-08-14T18:34:49Z
• Authors: Yuchen Deng; Yuzhen Ge; Ming Xu; Qiaolin Yu; Dequan Xiao; Siyu Yao; Ding Ma
• Keywords: 7. Clean energy; 01 natural sciences; 0104 chemical sciences

In the field of heterogeneous catalysis, transition metal carbides (TMCs) have attracted growing and extensive attention as a group important catalytic materials for variety energy-related reactions. Due to incorporation carbon atoms at interstitial sites, TMCs possess much higher density states near Fermi level, endowing material with noble-metal-like electron configuration behaviors. Crystal structure, site occupancies, surface termination, metal/carbon defects in bulk phase or are structural factors that influence behavior early studies applications TMCs, carbide itself was used individually catalytically active site, which exhibited unique performance comparable precious catalysts toward hydrogenation, dehydrogenation, isomerization, hydrodeoxygenation. To promote performance, doping secondary metals into lattice form bimetallic extensively studied. As recent development, utilization functionalized catalyst supports has achieved series significant breakthroughs low-temperature applications, including reforming alcohols, water-gas shift reactions, hydrogenation functional groups chemical production biomass conversion. Generally, excellence is attributed three factors: modulation geometric electronic structures supported centers, special reactivity TMC accelerates certain elementary step influences coverage intermediates, interfacial properties metal-carbide interface enhance synergistic effect. this Account, we will review discoveries from our other researchers on face-centered cubic MoC (α-MoC) both support enables highly efficient O-H bond activation several hydrogen evolution aqueous methanol reforming, ultralow temperature reaction, particular, α-MoC been demonstrated exhibit unprecedented strong interaction compared not only stabilizes under-coordinated species (single layered clusters) under thermal perturbation harsh reaction conditions but also tunes charge sites modifies their C-H CO chemisorption. We discuss how exploit metal/α-MoC construct CO-tolerant selective nitroarene derivatives. Several examples constructing bifunctional tandem systems using molybdenum enable extraction one-pot conversion substrates Fischer-Tropsch synthesis highlighted.