TY  - THES
AU  - Cheong, Oskar
TI  - Computational Investigation of Solvation Phenomena at Metal-Electrolyte Interfaces
VL  - 631
PB  - RWTH Aachen University
VL  - Dissertation
CY  - Jülich
M1  - FZJ-2024-04538
SN  - 978-3-95806-759-2
T2  - Schriften des Forschungszentrums Jülich Reihe Energie & Umwelt / Energy & Environment
SP  - xvii, 142
PY  - 2024
N1  - Dissertation, RWTH Aachen University, 2024
AB  - The interplay between metal catalyst surfaces and its surrounding solvent environment has a considerable impact on interfacial electrochemical processes, affecting both activity and selectivity of electrochemical reactions, e.g., the carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction reaction. While atomistic simulations are useful to gain advanced insight into the metal-electrolyte interface, many challenging problems exist for a realistic, computational description of the complex electrochemical interface. Especially, a computationally feasible scheme for description of solvation effects at the  metal-electrolyte interface has yet to be established. This thesis explores several computational improvements that enable accounting for solvation effects when modelling a metal-electrolyte interface. The first part of the thesis focuses on testing the ability of a classical molecular dynamics (CMD) simulation approach based on the interface force field (IFF) to efficiently model water structures on metal surfaces, using the lead (Pb) surface as a test case. While ab initiomolecular dynamics (AIMD) calculations are considered to be more accurate than CMD calculations, the latter allows for exploration of much longer time- and lengthscales, which results in better equilibrated water structures. This work demonstratesthe potential of using IFF-based CMD simulations for statistically complete sampling water structures on metal surfaces. In the second part of the thesis the impact of different solvation models on the CO2 reduction reaction on both silver (Ag) and lead (Pb) catalysts towards formic acid (HCOOH) and carbon monoxide (CO) products are investigated. The systematic analysis indicates that accounting for explicit solvation has a crucial impact on the CO2 reduction reaction, correctly predicting primary products on both metal catalysts, which was not achieved by simplified computation assuming vacuum environment. Furthermore, the performance of implicit, explicit and hybrid solvation schemes are discussed in that subproject.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)3 ; PUB:(DE-HGF)11
DO  - DOI:10.34734/FZJ-2024-04538
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1028357
ER  -