Advances in the fundamental understanding of alkane activation on oxide surfaces are essential for developing new catalysts that efficiently and selectively promote chemical transformations of alkanes. In this tutorial review, we discuss the current understanding of alkane activation on crystalline metal oxide surfaces, and focus mainly on summarizing our findings on alkane adsorption and C-H bond cleavage on the PdO(101) surface as determined from model ultrahigh vacuum experiments and theoretical calculations. These studies show that alkanes form strongly-bound σ-complexes on PdO(101) by datively bonding with coordinatively-unsaturated Pd atoms and that these molecularly adsorbed species serve as precursors for C-H bond activation on the oxide surface. In addition to discussing the binding and properties of alkane σ-complexes on PdO(101), we also summarize recent advances in kinetic models to predict alkane dissociation rates on solid surfaces. Lastly, we highlight computations which predict that the formation and facile C-H bond activation of alkane σ-complexes also occurs on RuO2 and IrO2 surfaces.

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We investigated the molecular binding of n-alkanes on Pd(111) and PdO(101) using conventional density functional theory (DFT) and the dispersion-corrected DFT-D3 method. In agreement with experimental findings, DFT-D3 predicts that the n-alkane desorption energies scale linearly with the molecule chain length on both surfaces, and that n-alkanes bind more strongly on PdO(101) than on Pd(111). The desorption energies computed using DFT-D3 are slightly higher than the measured values for n-alkanes on Pd(111), though the agreement between computation and experiment is a significant improvement over conventional DFT. The measured desorption energies of n-alkanes on PdO(101) and the energies computed using DFT-D3 agree to within better than 2.5 kJ/mol (< 5%) for chain lengths up to n-butane. The DFT-D3 calculations predict that the molecule-surface dispersion energy for a given n-alkane is similar in magnitude on Pd(111) and PdO(101), and that dative bonding between the alkanes and coordinatively unsaturated Pd atoms is primarily responsible for the enhanced binding of n-alkanes on PdO(101). From analysis of the DFT-D3 results, we estimate that the strength of an alkane η(2)(H, H) interaction on PdO(101) is ~16 kJ/mol, while a single η(1) H-Pd dative bond is worth about 10 kJ/mol.

We used conventional density functional theory (DFT) and dispersion-corrected DFT (DFT-D3) calculations to investigate C-H bond activation pathways for methane and ethane σ-complexes adsorbed on the PdO(101) surface. The DFT-D3 calculations predict lower and more physically realistic values of the apparent C-H bond cleavage barriers, which are defined relative to the gas-phase energy level, while giving nearly the same energy differences between stationary states as predicted by conventional DFT for a given reaction pathway. For the stable CH4 η(2) complex on PdO(101), DFT-D3 predicts that the C-H bond cleavage barriers are 55.2 and 16.1 kJ∕mol relative to the initial molecularly adsorbed and gaseous states, respectively. We also predict that dehydrogenation of the resulting CH3 groups and conversion to CH3O species are significantly more energetically demanding than the initial C-H bond activation of CH4 on PdO(101). Using DFT-D3, we find that an η(2) and an η(1) ethane complex can undergo C-H bond cleavage on PdO(101) with intrinsic energy barriers that are similar to that of the methane complex, but with apparent barriers that are close to zero. We also investigated the dissociation kinetics of methane and ethane on PdO(101) using microkinetic models, with parameters derived from the DFT-D3 relaxed structures. We find that a so-called 3N - 2 model, in which two frustrated adsorbate motions are treated as free motions, predicts desorption pre-factors and alkane dissociation probabilities that agree well with estimates obtained from the literature. The microkinetic simulations demonstrate the importance of accurately describing entropic contributions in kinetic simulations of alkane dissociative chemisorption.

We used dispersion-corrected density functional theory (DFT-D3) calculations to investigate the initial C-H bond cleavage of propane σ-complexes adsorbed on the PdO(101) surface. The calculations predict that propane molecules adsorbed in η(1) configurations can undergo facile C-H bond cleavage on PdO(101), where the energy barrier for C-H bond activation is lower than that for desorption for each molecular complex. The preferred pathway for propane dissociation on PdO(101) corresponds to cleavage of a primary C-H bond of a so-called staggered p-2η(1) complex which initially coordinates with the surface by forming two H-Pd dative bonds, one at each CH(3) group. Among all of the adsorbed propane complexes, the staggered p-2η(1) complex has the highest binding energy and must overcome the lowest energy barrier for C-H bond scission. Analysis of the atomic charges reveals that propane C-H bond cleavage occurs heterolytically on PdO(101), and suggests that primary C-H bond activation is favored because a more stabilizing charge distribution develops within the 1-propyl transition state structures. Lastly, we conducted kinetic simulations using microkinetic models derived from the DFT-D3 structures, and find that the models reproduce the apparent activation energy for propane dissociation on PdO(101) to within 14% of that determined experimentally. We show that the entropic contributions of the adsorbed transition structures greatly exceed those predicted by the harmonic oscillator model, and that quantitative agreement with the apparent dissociation pre-factor may be obtained by approximating two of the frustrated adsorbate motions as free motions while treating the remaining modes as harmonic vibrations.