Spectroscopy, microscopy and theoretical study of NO adsorption on MoS₂ and Co–Mo–S hydrotreating catalysts

Infrared (IR) spectroscopy using NO as a probe molecule has been one of the important methods for characterizing hydrotreating catalysts, since this technique provides information on the nature and quantity of active edge sites of these catalysts. However, due to the strong adsorption of NO, which may lead to significant edge reconstructions, it has not been clear, how the characteristics of the adsorption complexes may reflect the nature of the original edge sites. By combining IR spectroscopy measurements with scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) experiments and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we present new atomic-scale insight into the nature of NO adsorption on MoS₂ and Co–Mo–S nanoclusters. The DFT calculations and STM experiments show that NO does not adsorb at fully sulfided MoS₂ edges not containing hydrogen. However, typical sulfided catalysts will have hydrogen present at the edge in the form of S–H groups. For such samples, the results indicate a “push–pull” type mechanism involving simultaneous vacancy creation, NO adsorption and H₂S release. This mechanism is observed to dominate in the IR experiments. In STM experiments, stable vacancies can be generated by dosing atomic hydrogen, and these vacancies are observed to adsorb NO dimers. The detailed nature of the adsorption is revealed by DFT. IR measurements recorded during temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) show the presence of several NO adsorption complexes and the assignment to specific species is achieved by comparison to calculated frequencies and adsorption energies obtained from DFT. The results show that mononitrosyl species dominate at the Mo-edges, whereas stable dinitrosyl species are found at both the unpromoted and the Co-promoted S-edges. Thus, based on the present results, it is possible to use NO as a probe molecule to obtain detailed atomic-scale information on hydrotreating catalysts and the origins of activity differences.