Direct, gas phase propylene epoxidation reactions are carried out on model slabs representing Ru-Cu(111) bimetallic and Cu(111) metallic catalyst surfaces with periodic Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations. Ru-Cu(111) surface is modelled as a Cu(111) monolayer totally covering the surface of Ru(0001) surface underneath. The catalytic activity is evaluated following the generally accepted oxametallacycle mechanism. It is shown that the Ru-Cu(111) surface has a lower energy barrier (0.48 eV) for the stripping of the allylic hydrogen of propylene and a higher energy barrier (0.92 eV) towards propylene oxametallacycle (OMMP) formation compared to 0.75 eV barrier for OMMP formation and 0.83 eV barrier for allylic hydrogen stripping on Cu(111), and thus ineffective for propylene oxide production based on the investigated models and mechanism. In order to analyze the observed inability of the Ru-Cu(111) surface to selectively catalyze propylene oxide formation, a Lewis acid probe, SO2, was adsorbed on the oxygenated Cu(111) and Ru-Cu(111) surfaces and the binding energies, a measure of the basicity of the chemisorbed oxygen on the surfaces, on two systems are compared. As a conclusion, the reason behind this ineffectiveness of the Ru-Cu(111) surface for selectively catalyzing propylene epoxidation is related to the higher basicity of the atomic oxygen adsorbed on Ru-Cu(111) compared to the oxygen on Cu(111). The results are consistent both with recent publications about propylene epoxidation and previous studies performed about the structure of Ru-Cu catalysts.

Nitrous oxide decomposition on Ag51, Au51, Pt22, Rh51 and Ir51 clusters representing (111) surface were studied quantum mechanically by using the method of ONIOM with high layer DFT region and low layer of molecular mechanics region utilizing universal force field (UFF). The basis set employed in the DFT calculations is the Los Alamos LANL2DZ effective core pseudo-potentials (ECP) for silver, gold, platinum, rhodium and iridium and 3-21G** for nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen. Nitrous oxide was decomposed on the all metal surfaces investigated in this study by leaving oxygen atom adsorbed as supported by experimental findings. Activation energies of nitrous oxide decomposition on Ag51, Au51, Pt22, Rh51 and Ir51 representing (111) surface are calculated as 14.48 kcal/mol, 15.72 kcal/mol, 7.02 kcal/mol, 3.76 kcal/mol and 5.51 kcal/mol, respectively. Based on these results, decomposition of nitrous oxide occurs on Rh more easily than other metals.

In this work pentacene adsorption on both flat and stepped Ag(111) surfaces were investigated by using Density Functional Theory within Projected Augmented Wave method. On the flat Ag(111) surface favorable adsorption site for a single pentacene molecule was determined to be the bridge site with an angle of 60&amp / #9702 / between pentacene molecular long axis and [011] lattice direction. Potential energy surface was found to be flat, especially along lattice directions. Diffusion and rotation barriers for pentacene on this surface were found to be smaller than 40 meV indicating the possibility of a two dimensional gas phase. Calculated adsorption energies for the flat surface indicate a weak interaction between molecule and the surface indicating physisorption. On the flat surface monolayer case is found to have lower adsorption energy than the isolated case due to pentacene&amp / #8722 / pentacene interactions. On the stepped Ag(233) surface, close to the step edge, adsorption energy increased significantly due to the stronger interaction between pentacene molecule and low coordinated silver step atoms. On the terraces of this surface, far from step edges, however a flat potential energy surface was observed similar to the case of flat Ag(111) surface. On the stepped surface pentacene found its favorable configuration as parallel to the step with a tilt angle similar to the observed thin film phase of pentacene on Ag(111) surface. Pentacene molecule showed small distortions on stepped surface and are closer to the silver step atoms 1 &Aring / more than the case of flat surface, hinting a chemical interaction as well as van der Waals interactions. However on Ag(799) surface, the perpendicular orientation of the pentacene molecule to the step direction showed no strong interaction due to less matching of carbon atoms with silver step atoms.

Ethylene adsorption was studied by use of DFT/B3LYP with basis set 6-31G(d,p) in Gaussian&lsquo / 03 software. It was found that ethylene adsorbs molecularly on the Ni13 nanocluster with &amp / #960 / adsorption mode. &amp / #960 / adsorption mode is studied for the Ni10 (1 1 1), Ni13 (1 0 0) and Ni10 (1 1 0) surface cluster as well. Relative energy values were calculated as &amp / #8722 / 50.86 kcal/mol, &amp / #8722 / 20.48 kcal/mol, &amp / #8722 / 32.44 kcal/mol and &amp / #8722 / 39.27 kcal/mol for Ni13 nanocluster, Ni10 (1 1 1), Ni13 (1 0 0) and Ni10 (1 1 0) surface cluster models, respectively. Ethylene adsorption energy was found inversely proportional to Ni coordination number when Ni10 (1 1 1), Ni13 (1 0 0) and Ni10 (1 1 0) cluster models and Ni13 nanocluster were compared with each other. DFT/B3LYP and basis set of 86-411(41d)G in Gaussian&lsquo / 03 was used to investigate Ni55 nanocluster. Ethylene adsorption on Ni55 nanocluster was studied by means of equilibrium geometry calculations with &amp / #960 / adsorption modes for two different coordination numbers as 6 and 8. The related adsorption energies were approximately found as -22.07 and -14.82 kcal/mol for these coordination numbers of surfaces, respectively. In addition, the binding energies stated in literature that are for Ni2 dimer and Ni13 nanoclusters were considered together with our binding energy results for Ni55 nanocluster. Accordingly, when a correlation line was drawn and the intercept of binding energies was obtained against the value of &amp / #8213 / n&amp / #8722 / 1/3&amp / #8214 / where n is the number of atoms in the cluster / the result of interception gives a good estimation for bulk nickel binding energy at infinite &amp / #8213 / n&amp / #8214 / . This interception result was found as 4.58 eV/atom where the experimental value is reported as 4.45 eV/atom for bulk in the literature. Ehtylene hydrogenation mechanisms were also investigated in terms of the resultant geometries and total energy required for the related mechanism steps.

This work computationally investigates the partial oxidation of ethylene (i.e. ethylene epoxidation) using periodic Density Functional Theory (DFT) on slab models that represent the catalyst surfaces. The mechanical aspects of the reaction were investigated on silver surfaces, which are industrially applied catalysts, for a wide range of surface models varying from metallic surfaces with low oxygen coverage to oxide surfaces. For comparison, the metallic and oxide phases of copper and gold were also studied. On these surfaces, the reaction paths and the transition states along these paths for the selective and non-selective reaction channels were obtained using the climbing image nudged elastic band (CI-NEB) method. In order to answer the question &ldquo / what is the relation between the surface state and the ethylene oxide selectivity?&rdquo / metallic (100), (110) and (111) surfaces of Cu, Ag and Au / and, (001) surfaces of Cu2O, Ag2O and Au2O oxides were studied and compared. For the studied metallic surfaces, it was found that the selective and non-selective reaction channels proceed through the oxametallacycle (OMC) intermediate, and the product selectivity depends on the relative barriers of the these channels, in agreement with the previous reports. However for the studied metallic surfaces and oxygen coverages, a surface state that favors the ethylene oxide (EO) formation was not identified. The studied Au surfaces did not favor the oxygen adsorption and dissociation, and the Cu surfaces favored the non-selective product (acetaldehyde, AA) formation. Nevertheless, the results of Ag surfaces are in agreement with the ~50% EO selectivity of the un-promoted silver catalyst. The catalyst surface in the oxide state was modeled by the (001) surfaces of the well defined Cu2O, Ag2O and Au2O oxide phases. Among these three oxides, the Cu2O is found not to favor EO formation whereas Au2O is known to be unstable, however selective for epoxidation. The major finding of this work is the identification of a direct epoxidation path that is enabled by the reaction of the surface oxygen atoms, which are in two-fold (i.e. bridge) positions and naturally exist on (001) oxide surfaces of the studied metals. Among the three oxides studied, only Ag2O(001) surface does not show a barrier for the formation of adsorbed epoxide along the direct epoxidation path. Moreover, the overall heat of reaction that is around 105 kJ/mol agrees well with the previous reports. The single step, direct epoxidation path is a key step in explaining the high EO selectivities observed. Also for the oxide surfaces, the un-selective reaction that ends up in combustion products is found to proceed through the OMC mechanism where aldehyde formation is favored. Another major finding of this study is that, for the studied oxide surfaces two different types of OMC intermediates are possible. The first possibility is the formation of the OMC intermediate on oxygen vacant sites, where the ethylene can interact with the surface metal atoms directly. The second possibility is the formation of a direct OMC intermediate, through the interaction of the gas phase ethylene with the non-vacant oxide surface. This occurs through the local surface reconstruction induced by the ethylene. The effect of Cl promotion was also studied. Coadsorption of Cl is found to suppress the oxygen vacant sites and also the reconstruction effects that are induced by ethylene adsorption. Thus, by preventing the interaction of the ethylene directly with the surface metal atoms, Cl prevents the OMC formation, therefore the non-selective channel. At the same time Cl increases the electrophilicity of reacting surface oxygen. The direct epoxidation path appears to be stabilized by coadsorbed oxygen atoms. Thus, we carry the discussions on the silver catalyzed ethylene epoxidation one step further. Herein we present that the EO selectivity will be limited in the case of metallic catalyst, whereas, the oxide surfaces enable a direct mechanism where EO is produced selectively. The role of the Cl promoter is found to be mainly steric where it blocks the sites of non-selective channel.

The nature of the ground state and the first (lowest) singlet excited state geometrical conformations and electronic transitions in the aromatic five-membered heterocyclic oligomers &ndash / oligothiophenes (nT), oligofurans (nF), and oligopyrroles (nP)- containing up to six monomer units (total of 18 molecules) were explored using several computational methodologies. Geometry optimizations were carried out at Austin Model 1 (AM1), Restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF/6-31G*), and Density Functional Theory (DFT, B3LYP/6-31G*) levels for the ground-state conformations of these structurally well-defined heterocyclic oligomers. The Configuration Interaction Singles (CIS) method with the 6-31G* basis set was chosen in computation of the optimal geometry of the lowest singlet excited state. Lowest singlet excitation S1&szlig / S0 energies were calculated using the Zerner&rsquo / s Intermediate Neglect of Differential Overlap for Spectroscopy (ZINDO/S), CIS (CIS/6-31G*), and Time-Dependent DFT (TDDFT/6-31G* and TDDFT/6-31+G*) methods. In computation of the emission S1&agrave / S0 energies, we have employed all methods above except ZINDO/S. In investigation of geometries of the ground and lowest singlet excited state, we compared the bond length alternation (BLA) parameters, Dri in the conjugated backbone of the oligomers. Saturation of the geometrical parameters at the center of oligomers was observed after a certain chain length. Among all methodologies used in computation of excitation (S1&szlig / S0) and emission (S1&agrave / S0) energies, TDDFT results showed the best agreement with experimental data. Fits of computed and experimental excitation energies to an exponential function using the least squares method enabled us to predict Effective Conjugation Length (ECL) values. We obtained the ECLs of 17 (17), 16 (15), and 14 (13) monomer units for polythiophene (PTh), polyfuran (PFu), and polypyrrole (PPr), which have very good agreement with the results obtained from the fits of experimental data (the values in parentheses).