Including molecular precursor adsorption

A strongly bound precursor could change the reactivity of the catalyst, and this effect cannot be analyzed within the model that has been used so far. The reaction system in Model 1 will therefore now be expanded slightly, to facilitate this analysis  

Model 2 Including the effects of a strongly bound precursor. 

In this model, A2 molecules are first adsorbed on the surface non-dissociatively. The A2 molecular precursor might dissociate if there is a free active site adjacent to it, and if it is capable of climbing the dissociation energy barrier due to thermal excitation, or the precursor could be thermally activated to desorb as A2 into the gas phase again. It is still assumed that the dissociation (now from the precursor state and not from the gas phase) is the rate-determining step. If the reaction proceeds to a steady-state, but the over-all gas phase reactants and products are kept out of equilibrium, the precursor state will be in equilibrium with the gas phase reactant, but not with the dissociated state. This model will have a turnover frequency given by  

In the other cases discussed above, the optimal catalyst is relatively close to the narrow region of dissociative chemisorption energies from —2 to — leV. It does, however, appear that the models developed so far could also have a problem describing why some high temperature and very exothermic reactions (with corresponding small approaches to equilibrium) also lie within the narrow window of chemisorption energies. To remove these discrepancies we shall relax the assumption of one rate-determining step, but retain an analytic model, by use of a least upper bound approach. 

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Metals can also be introduced by adsorption of the elemental vapor or melt, for instance in the case of mercury or alkali metals. Adsorption of molecular "precursors such as carbonyls of iron, cobalt, nickel and molybdenum, and subsequent thermal or photochemical decomposition has become an important approach for metals that are difficult to reduce. Other ligands such as alkyls or acetylacetonates have also been used for this purpose. In all these cases, thermal decomposition carries the risk of excessive mobility of the precursors or intermediates such that agglomeration and particle formation at the external surface of the zeolite crystals can occur. Barrer has described the synthesis of salt-bearing zeolites including the famous dry synthesis of ultramarin in 1828, which is sodalite containing intercalated Na-polysulphides. Adsorption of numerous non-ionic and salt species into zeolites was also described, either as such or as precursors for oxides, hydroxides, or metals. 

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