Theoretical Investigations of the Activation of CO2 on the Transition Metal-doped Cu(100) and Cu(111) Surfaces

Periodic density functional theory calculations have been performed to investigate the chemisorption behavior of CO2 molecule on a series of surface alloys that are built by dispersing individual middle-late transition metal (TM) atoms (TM = Fe, Co, Ni, Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag, Os, Ir, Pt, Au) on the Cu(100) and Cu(111) surfaces. The most stable configurations of CO2 chemisorbed on different TM/Cu surfaces are determined, and the results show that among the late transition metals, Co, Ru, and Os are potentially good dopants to enhance the chemisorption and activation of CO2 on copper surfaces. To obtain a deep understanding of the adsorption property, the bonding characteristics of the adsorption bonds are carefully examined by the crystal orbital Hamilton population technique, which reveals that the TM atom primarily provides d orbitals with z-component, namely d(z)(2), d(xz,) and d(yz) orbitals to interact with the adsorbate.