Adsorption and oxidation of formaldehyde on a polycrystalline Pt film electrode: An in situ IR spectroscopy search for adsorbed reaction intermediates

• Zenonas Jusys and
• R. Jürgen Behm

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2014, 5, 747–759, doi:10.3762/bjnano.5.87

• dissociative adsorption and oxidation of formaldehyde are discussed. Keywords: electrocatalysis; formaldehyde adsorption; formyl intermediate; in situ spectro-electrochemistry; Pt; Introduction The electrooxidation of organic C1 molecules, in particular of methanol, has been one of the most important topics

• on these findings, a similar reaction path, involving the formation of an adsorbed formyl intermediate, may also be expected for adsorption/oxidation of the C1 molecules. Adsorbed formyl species were indeed predicted as reaction intermediates in functional theory based theoretical studies of the

• formic acid would result in a mixture of both D1- and H1-formate species. Within the detection limits, this does not seem to be the case (see the magnified insets in Figure 1, and Figure 2b, where only a single band of D1-formate is resolved). Therefore, desorption of the formyl intermediate as