Adsorption & Oxidation of
Formaldehyde on Transition
Metals Catalysts from
Alkaline Aqueous Solutions

By Marnix ten Kortenaar
December 2003
Delft University Press
ISBN: 90-407-2445-8
204 pages, Illustrated, 6 ½" x 9 ½"
$77.50 Paper Original

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This is a Ph.D. dissertation. The electrocatalytic oxidation of formaldehyde on transition metals has been studied extensively over the past decades in view of its application in electroless metal deposition. Most studies have focused on the elucidation of reaction mechanisms although little effort has been made to describe the reaction kinetically. The kinetics of the catalytic reaction may depend on the metal-reactant adsorption enthalpies in a volcano-type fashion, a dependence that is generally assumed to validate the so-called Sabatier principle. This principle states that optimum catalytic properties arise at optimum surface coverage of reactants at the catalyst and at optimum metal-reactant bond strengths. The verification of the volcano-type dependence and the related validation of Sabatier's principle for the metal-formaldehyde system was the scientific motivation to conduct the research described in this thesis. To arrive at this stage, the kinetics of the oxidation of formaldehyde was studied first on gold by voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and differential electrochemical mass spectroscopy. Then, the adsorption characteristics of the formaldehyde-gold system were examined by the radiotracer thin-gap technique. The models that resulted from these studied have served as springboard for the comparison of reaction rates on other metals than gold. Experimental methods are given in chapter 2, while a summary of related work that was considered to be beyond the scope of this thesis is described in Chapter 8. Final discussions and recommendations are drawn up in chapter 9.

Electrochemistry

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