Effect of adsorption site, size, and composition of Pt/Au bimetallic clusters on the CO frequency: a density functional theory study

Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed to investigate the C-O stretching frequency changes when a CO molecule was adsorbed to Pt/Au clusters of 2-4 atoms. Our calculations show that the adsorption site is the most sensitive quantity to the C-O stretching frequency shifts. All the bridge site adsorptions yield a CO frequency band of 1737-1927 cm-1 with the CO bond distance of 1.167-1.204 A regardless of cluster composition and size, and all the atop site adsorptions yield a CO frequency band of 2000-2091 cm-1 with the CO bond distance of 1.151-1.167 A. More detailed analysis of the two frequency bands shows that each band may consist of two emerging subbands with the lower frequencies corresponding to the CO adsorption to Pt atoms and the higher frequencies to the CO adsorption to Au atoms. The insensitivity of the CO frequency shift to the cluster size indicates that the trend discussed here for small clusters may be used to interpret the experimental observations for nanoparticles. Our results also illustrated that the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy measurement may be used as a sensitive tool to identify adsorption sites of the Pt/Au nanoparticles using CO adsorption as the probe.