Calibration of Computational Mössbauer Spectroscopy to Unravel Active
Sites in FeNC-Catalysts for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction
Abstract
Single atom catalysts with iron ions in the active site, known as FeNC
catalysts, show high activity for the oxygen reduction reaction and
hence hold promise for access to low cost fuel cells. Due to the
amorphous, multi-phase structure of the FeNC catalysts, the iron
environment and its electronic structure are poorly understood. While it
is widely accepted that the catalytically active site contains an iron
ion ligated by several nitrogen donors embedded in a graphene-like
plane, the exact structural details such as the presence or nature of
axial ligands are unknown. Computational chemistry in combination with
Mössbauer spectroscopy can help to unravel the geometric and electronic
structures of the active sites. As a first step towards this goal, we
present a calibration of computational Mössbauer spectroscopy for
FeN4-like environments. The uncertainty of both the
isomer shift and the quadrupole splitting prediction is determined, from
which trust regions for the Mössbauer parameter predictions of
computational FeNC models are derived. We find that TPSSh, B3LYP, and
PBE0 perform equally well; the trust regions with B3LYP are 0.13 mm
s−1 for the isomer shift and 0.45 mm
s−1 for the quadrupole splitting. The calibration data
is made publicly available in an interactive notebook that provides
predicted Mössbauer parameters with individual uncertainty estimates
from computed contact densities and quadrupole splitting values. We show
that a differentiation of common FeNC Mössbauer signals by a separate
analysis of isomer shift and quadrupole splitting will most likely be
insufficient, whereas their simultaneous evaluation will allow the
assignment to adequate computational FeNC models.