Graphdiyne as a metal-free catalyst for low-temperature CO oxidation

The oxidation of CO has attracted great interest in recent years because of its important role in enhancing the catalyst durability in fuel cells and in solving the growing environmental problems caused by CO emission. The usually used noble metal nanocatalysts are costly and require high reaction temperature for efficient operation. We report here a density functional theory (DFT) study of low-temperature CO oxidation catalyzed by graphdiyne, which is a new two-dimensional periodic carbon allotrope with a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon building of sp- and sp2-hybridized carbon atoms and has been shown in our recent work to have high catalytic activity for oxygen reduction reactions (ORRs). We studied the adsorption properties of CO and O2 on graphdiyne, simulated the reaction mechanism of CO oxidation involving graphdiyne, and analyzed electronic structures at each step of reaction progress. The simulation results indicate that the adsorption of O2 prevails over CO adsorption on the graphdiyne sheet; the reaction of CO oxidation by adsorbed O2 on graphdiyne proceeds via the Eley–Rideal (ER) mechanism with a decrease in the energy of the system and the energy barrier as low as 0.18 eV in the rate-limiting step. The oxidation reaction includes the breakage of the O–O bond in the adsorbed O2, formation of the metastable carbonate-like intermediate state, and the creation of CO2 molecules. The results presented here demonstrate that graphdiyne is a good, low-cost, and metal-free catalyst for low-temperature CO oxidation, can be used to solve problems caused by environmental CO emission and has a high ability of CO tolerance by its removal through oxidation in fuel cells.