Covalency competition induced selective bond breakage and surface reconstruction in manganese cobaltite towards enhanced electrochemical charge storage

Manganese cobaltite(MnCo_(2)_(4))is a promising electrode material because of its attractive redox chemistry and excellent charge storage capability.Our previous work demonstrated that the octahedrally-coordinated Mn are prone to react with the hydroxyl ions in alkaline electrolyte upon electrochemical cycling and separates on the surface of spinel to reconstruct into d-MnO_(2) nanosheets irreversibly,thus results in a change of the reaction mechanism with Kþion intercalation.However,the low capacity has greatly limited its practical application.Herein,we found that the tetrahedrally-coordinated Co_(2) þions were leached when MnCo_(2)_(4) was equilibrated in 1 mol L^(-1) HCl solution,leading to the formation of layered CoOOH on MnCo_(2)_(4) surface which is originated from the covalency competition induced selective breakage of the CoT–O bond in CoT–O–CoO and subsequent rearrangement of free Co_(6) octahedra.The as-formed CoOOH is stable upon cycling in alkaline electrolyte,exhibits conversion reaction mechanism with facile proton diffusion and is free of massive structural evolution,thus enables utilization of the bulk electrode material and realizes enhanced specific capacity as well as facilitated charge transfer and ion diffusion.In general,our work not only offers a feasible approach to deliberate modification of MnCo_(2)_(4)'s surface structure,but also provides an in-depth understanding of its charge storage mechanism,which enables rational design of the spinel oxides with promising charge storage properties.

Benchmarking the Polyatomic Reaction Dynamics of X+Methane

With recent developments of sophisticated experimental techniques and advanced theoretical methods/computations, the field of chemical dynamics has reached the point that theoryexperiment comparisons can be made at a quantitative level in very fine details for a prototypical A+BC system. As the system becomes larger, more degrees of freedom are involved and the complexity increases exponentially. At the same time, the multifaceted nature of polyatomic systems also opens up the possibilities for observing many new chemistry and novel phenomena|a land of opportunities. For the past 15 years or so my laboratory has delved into the reaction dynamics of methane+X (X: F, Cl, O(3P), and OH). This effort shifts the paradigm in the field of reaction dynamics by making the title reaction a benchmark polyatomic system. In this account, I shall disclose my thinking behind some of the key concepts and methods we introduced and how the unexpectedly discovered phenomena led to other uncharted territories. Those ndings not only enrich our understanding of the specific reactions we studied at the most fundamental level and inspire the theoretical developments, but also shape our thinking and lay the foundation for future explorations of different aspects of the multifaceted nature of polyatomic reactivity.

Mode-specific and bond-selective dissociative chemisorption of CHD_3 and CH_2D_2 on Ni(111) revisited using a new potential energy surface

Dissociative chemisorption of methane on a nickel surface is a prototypical system for studying mode-specific chemistry in gassurface reactions.We recently developed a fifteen-dimensional potential energy surface for this system which has proven to be chemically accurate in reproducing the measured absolute dissociative sticking probabilities of CHD_3in thermal conditions and with vibrational excitation on Ni(111)at high incident energies.Here,using this new potential energy surface,we explored mode specificity and bond selectivity for CHD_3and CH_2D_2dissociative chemisorption at low incidence energies down to^50 k J/mol via a quasi-classical trajectory method.Our calculated dissociation probabilities are consistent with previous theoretical and experimental ones with an average shift in translational energy of^8 k J/mol.Our results very well reproduce the C–H/C–D branching ratio upon the C–H local mode excitation,which can be rationalized by the sudden vector projection model.Quantitatively,however,the calculated dissociative sticking probabilities are systematically larger than experimental ones,due presumably to the artificial zero point energy leakage into reaction coordinate.Further high-dimensional quantum dynamics calculations are necessary for acquiring a chemically accurate description of methane dissociative chemisorption at low incident energies.