Although
silica-supported molybdenum and tungsten oxide systems
are widely used in catalysis, the nature of the surface metal oxide
species is still not fully recognized. In this work, comprehensive
periodic and cluster density functional theory (DFT) studies of the
isolated Mo(VI) and W(VI) oxide species on dehydrated amorphous silica
have been performed to give insight into their heterogeneity. It is
shown that the relative stabilities of the metal oxide species strongly
depend on their location that influences their geometry and the strain
of the dehydrated silica surface. The favorable located monooxo W(VI)
species are clearly more stable than the dioxo W(VI) species, whereas
no strong thermodynamic preference is predicted in the case of the
Mo(VI) species. The relative stability of the monoxo species increases
in the order: Cr < Mo < W. However, due to geometrical constraints
on the silica surface, formation of the tetragrafted monooxo species
is hampered, compared to the digrafted dioxo species and the latter
are expected to be in majority. The monografted hydroxy dioxo Mo(VI)
species are unstable. Based on the vibrational frequency analysis,
some details regarding the structure of the experimentally observed
dioxo species in the MoO
x
/SiO2 catalyst are proposed, while the results for the WO
x
/SiO2 system are somewhat ambiguous.