Evidence for cyclohexyl as a reactive surface intermediate during high-pressure cyclohexane catalytic reactions on Pt(111) by sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy

Minchul Yang; Gabor A Somorjai

doi:10.1021/ja035710u

Evidence for cyclohexyl as a reactive surface intermediate during high-pressure cyclohexane catalytic reactions on Pt(111) by sum frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy

J Am Chem Soc. 2003 Sep 10;125(36):11131-5. doi: 10.1021/ja035710u.

Authors

Minchul Yang¹, Gabor A Somorjai

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of California, and the Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.

PMID: 12952495
DOI: 10.1021/ja035710u

Abstract

Sum frequency generation (SFG) surface vibrational spectroscopy has been used to identify reactive surface intermediates in situ during catalytic dehydrogenation reactions of high-pressure cyclohexane (C(6)H(12)) on the Pt(111) crystal surface in the presence and absence of high-pressure hydrogen. These experiments provide the first spectroscopic evidence of cyclohexyl (C(6)H(11)) as a reactive surface intermediate during the cyclohexane catalytic conversion to benzene at high pressure in the presence of excess hydrogen. In addition, it was proposed from temperature-dependent SFG experiments that dehydrogenation of cyclohexyl is a rate-limiting step in the cyclohexane catalytic conversion to benzene.