Recently, Prof. Wang Guichang’s group has published the research entitled “Energy Transfer Dynamics of Formate Decomposition on Cu (110)” on Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. (DOI:10.1002/ange.201611342), which is a jointly-completed work with Prof. Junji Nakamura from University of Tsukuba.

Energy transfer and bond recombination are fundamental processes in a chemical reaction. Currently, crossed molecular beam techniques has been successfully applied to energy transfer processes in gas-phase bimolecular reactions, while for gas–surface reactions, research of energy transfer is challenging due to the large number of degrees of freedom available to the surface atoms.

However, in cooperation with Prof. Junji Nakamura, Prof. Wang’s group has properly tackled this challenge by angle-resolved (AR) analysis and density functional theory (DFT).

They investigated the kinetics of formate decomposition on copper (110) surfaces and found that ¹³CO₂ desorption during formate decomposition in the steady-state reaction of H¹³COOH with O₂ on Cu (110) is a thermal non-equilibrium process, which supports the proposed ER-type mechanism of formate synthesis by copper catalysts.

Undoubtedly, their work is important in the synthesis of methanol by hydrogenation of CO₂.

For the detailed information of this paper, please click the link below: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201611342/epdf