Probing the structural and electronic factors affecting the adsorption and reactivity of alkenes in acidic zeolites using DFT calculations and multivariate statistical methods

Quantum mechanical (QM) cluster calculations have been performed on a model of ZSM-5 at DFT and MP2 levels. We investigated how the adsorption energies and the energetics of alkoxide intermediate formation of six different alkene substrates, ethene, propene, 1-butene, cis/trans butene, and isobutene, vary in this zeolite model. An analysis of the DFT geometric, electronic, and energetic parameters of the zeolite-substrate complexes, transition states, and alkoxide intermediates is performed using principal components analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS). These deliver an insight into the correlated changes that occur between molecular structure and energy along the reaction coordinate between the physisorbed and chemisorbed species within the zeolite. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first occasion multivariate techniques such as PCA or PLS have been employed to profile the changes in electronics, distances, and angles in QM calculations of catalytic systems such as zeolites. We find the calculated adsorption and the alkoxide intermediate energies correlate strongly with the absolute charge on the substrate and the length of the substrate double bond. The transition states' energies are not affected by the zeolite framework as modeled, which explains why they correlate strongly with the gas-phase substrate protonation energy. Our cluster results show that for ethene, propene, 1-butene, and isobutene, the relative energetics associated with the formation of the alkoxide intermediate in ZSM-5 follow the same trends as calculations where the effects of the framework are included.