Dissociative Adsorption of Acetone on Platinum Single-Crystal Electrodes

In this article, we investigate the poisoning reaction that occurs at platinum electrodes during the electrocatalytic hydrogenation of acetone. A better understanding of this poisoning reaction is important to develop electrocatalysts that are both active for the hydrogenation of carbonyl compounds and resilient against poisoning side reactions. We adsorb acetone to Pt(331), Pt(911), Pt(510), and Pt(533) (i.e., Pt[2(111) × (110)], Pt[5(100) × (111)], [5(100) × (110)], and Pt[4(111) × (100), respectively])) as well as Pt(100) single-crystal electrodes and perform reductive and oxidative stripping experiments after electrolyte exchange. We found that acetone adsorbs molecularly intact on all sites apart from Pt(100) terrace sites and can be stripped reductively from the electrode surface at a potential positive of hydrogen evolution. However, at Pt(100) terraces, acetone adsorbs dissociatively as carbon monoxide, which remains attached to the electrode surface and leads to its poisoning. Strikingly, dissociative adsorption does not occur on step sites with (100) geometry, which suggests that the dissociative adsorption of acetone is limited to Pt(100) terraces featuring a certain minimum “ensemble” number of freely available Pt atoms.