Determinação estrutural de óxidos mistos de magnésio e alumínio por cálculos de energia total

Abstract

Hydrotalcite-type compounds have been widely used in heterogeneous catalysis, as catalysts as supports for catalysts or as catalyst precursor. The main reason for this is the ability of these materials to generate, by thermal decomposition, mixed oxides of composition Mg1-x Alx □x/2 O(1+x/2) , with a relatively high surface area (> 200 m2 g-1). In spite of the importance of the mixed oxides being recognized, the structure of these materials is not wellknown. They are obtained in powder form and usually have low crystallinity degree, making it difficult to analyze in detail the structure of the mixed oxide by X-ray diffraction . 27Al MAS-NMR and EXAFS data showed that some Al cations migrate from octahedral to tetrahedral sites during thermal decomposition. Thus, some models have been suggested by some authors: first, structures with cations in octahedral sites only, and due to the results of NMR, structures with Al atoms located in tetrahedral and octahedral sites. Since there is no conclusive information about the structure, the use of theoretical calculations to propose structural models which can describe the structure, can be a promising approach. This work aims to the use of a genetic algorithm (GA), in order to obtain structural models with different compositions that can simulate the structural characteristics of the Mg(Al)O. In these models only octahedral sites were occupied by cations and vacancies. The relative stability between the various proposals was evaluated by the total energy, that was first calculated with the GULP program, through interatomic potential, and in a second step by ab initio calculations based on Density Functional Theory. GA's are robust, generic and easily adaptable. Basically, what makes a GA is create a population of possible answers to the problem being treated and then submit it to the process of evolution in search of the best solutions. GA was previously tested and showed satisfactory results because converges in 100% of cases for the test structure previously described, being possible its use in problems where the structure is not completely solved, as is the case of the Mg(Al)O oxide. This study also demonstrated the advantage of using interatomic potential due to the large number of candidates produced by the GA. The characteristics of the more stable Mg(Al)O mixed oxide structures were compared with the properties available in the literature, such as XRD, geometrical parameters and thermodynamic data, The results suggest that the models investigated are representative of the mixeds oxides structure obtained by some routes of the thermal decomposition of the MgAl hydrotalcite.