(113a) Trends for Predicting Adhesion Energies across Oxide Support Materials for Catalytic Late Transition Metal Nanoparticles Supported on Oxides

Understanding the energetics of late transition metal nanoparticles dispersed on oxide-based catalyst support materials is important for the development of high-performance catalysts. We present here fundamental structure-function relationships of catalytic metal nanoparticles on popular high-surface-area catalyst support materials. Metal/support adhesion energies give an estimate of the metal chemical potential in metal nanoparticles versus particle size, which provides information on reactivity and sintering resistance. We use single crystal adsorption calorimetry (SCAC) to directly measure metal adsorption energies and metal atom chemical potential on model catalyst supports. We report a new set of data showing the energetics and adhesion energy of Cu nanoparticles on rutile-TiO₂(100). With this measurement, we find that the adhesion energy of metals on the rutile-TiO₂(100) surface correlates proportional to the oxophilicity of the metal element. Similar proportional correlations between the adhesion energy of metals to MgO(100) and CeO₂(111) and their oxophilicities have been previously published. Expanding upon these existing oxide adhesion energy trends with the new rutile-TiO₂(100) data gives insight into the relationship between physical properties of the oxide supports and their metal adhesion energetics. The ability to predict the adhesion energy, and thus the metal chemical potential versus size, of late transition metal nanoparticles across oxides can streamline the development of optimal catalysts.