DFT study of the adsorption and dissociation of water on Ni(111), Ni(110) and Ni(100) surfaces

Water adsorption and dissociation on catalytic metal surfaces play a key role in a variety of industrial processes, and a detailed understanding of this process and how it is effected by the surface structure will assist in developing improved catalysts. Hence, a comparative study of the adsorption and dissociation of water on Ni(111), Ni(110) and Ni(100) surfaces, which is often used as catalyst, has been performed using density functional theory. The results show that the adsorption energies and dissociation rates depend on the surface structure. The adsorption energies for H2O and OH decrease in the order Ni(110) > Ni(100) > Ni(111), and for the O and H atoms the adsorption energies decrease in the order Ni(100) > Ni(111) > Ni(110). In addition, the splitting of water to OH and H has lower activation energies over less packed Ni(110) and Ni(100) surfaces compared to the highly packed Ni(111) surface. The subsequent splitting of the OH to O and H also has the lowest activation energy on the Ni(110) surface. At 463 K, which is typical for industrial processes that include the water gas shift reaction, the H2O splitting is approximately 6000 and 10 times faster on the Ni(110) surface compared to the Ni(111) and Ni(100) surfaces, respectively, and OH splitting is 200 and 3000 times faster, respectively. The complete water dissociation reaction rate decreases in the order Ni(110) > Ni(100) > Ni(111).