Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme
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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik
O 71: Surface Magnetism (jointly with MA)
O 71.6: Talk
Thursday, March 14, 2013, 16:30–16:45, H3
Role of magnetism in Catalysis: RuO2 (110) surface — •Engin Torun1, Changming Fang1,3, Gilles A de Wijs1, and Robert de Groot1,2 — 1Electronic Structure of Materials, Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Molecules and Materials, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands — 2Laboratory of Chemical Physics, Zernike Institute of Advanced Materials, Nijenborgh 4, NL-9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands — 3University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Computational Materials Physics, Sensengasse 8/12, 1090 Wien, Austria
The three conservation laws (energy, momentum and angular momentum) are well known, but the consequences of the last one are too often neglected. A clear example in electrochemistry is the electrolysis of water. Hydrogen production by electrolysis of water seemingly violates conservation of angular momentum because only one magnetic species is involved (oxygen). The losses in electrolysis are overwhelmingly dominated by the production of oxygen. While the ground state of oxygen is magnetic its first and second excited states are non-magnetic singlet states. This explains the losses at the anode. The oxygen is initially produced in a non-magnetic excited state. A fundamental solution of this problem is only possible by the introduction of a second magnetic species. We report calculations on the surface electronic structure of one of the best anodes, the RuO2 (110) surface. This surface itself is magnetic and a mechanism will be proposed how this second magnetic species allows the production of oxygen in its magnetic ground state. A similar situation in biology will be discussed.