Quantitative Investigation of MgO Brønsted Basicity: DFT, IR, and Calorimetry Study of Methanol Adsorption

The adsorption geometries, energies, and vibrational frequencies of methanol on MgO defective surfaces have been calculated by periodic DFT simulations. The results are very comparable with those obtained with water and are also in very good accordance with microcalorimetry and infrared experiments. At low coverage, the dissociation is observed on all defects involving ions in low coordinations. Over and above the coordination number of surface ions, the adsorption energy is strongly governed by the surface topology: dissociation on confined sites gives rise to methoxy groups highly stabilized by bridging two or even three cations. The occurrence of such very strong sites on MgO powder is confirmed by microcalorimetry. The dissociation ability depends on the methanol coverage because it modifies the surface relaxation and the network of H bonds, resulting, for a given defect, in similar adsorption energies for molecular and dissociated species at high coverage. This explains why there are more strong sites (quantified by microcalorimetry) than dissociating sites (quantified by infrared).