Abstract:
The dissociative adsorption of H
2 on Cu
19 and defective graphene-supported Cu
19 clusters (Cu
19G) are investigated using
ab initio molecular dynamics. The molecular-level trajectories show that, on Cu
19, the preferred adsorption site is the bridge-hollow site, where the two H atoms are adsorbed at the bridge and hollow sites beside a Cu atom, with an adsorption energy of –0.74 eV. In contrast, on the defective graphene-supported Cu
19 cluster, the favorite adsorption site is located where the two H atoms are adsorbed at hollow-hollow sites with an adsorption energy of –1.27 eV. In general, the average adsorption energy on the defective graphene-supported Cu
19 cluster is –1.07 eV, which is about 84% larger than that of –0.58 eV on the Cu
19 cluster. This indicates that the adsorption capacity is greatly enhanced for the dissociative adsorption of H
2 on the defective graphene-supported Cu
19 cluster. The
d-band center shifts to the Fermi level, illustrating the enhanced adsorption capacity on the defective graphene-supported Cu
19 cluster. The integrated crystal orbital Hamilton population analysis reveals that stronger bond interactions between hydrogen atoms with their bonded Cu atoms lead to much larger adsorption energies on the defective graphene-supported Cu
19 cluster compared to the Cu
19 cluster.