Random Phase Approximation in Surface Chemistry: Water Splitting on Iron

The reaction of water with zero-valent iron (anaerobic corrosion) is a complex chemical process involving physisorption and chemisorption events. We employ random phase approximation (RPA) along with gradient-corrected and hybrid density functional theory (DFT) functionals to study the reaction of water with the Fe atom and Fe(100) surface. We show that the involvement of the exact electron exchange and nonlocal correlation effects in RPA improves the description of all steps of the reaction on the Fe surface with respect to standard [meaning local density approximation (LDA) or generalized gradient approximation (GGA)] DFT methods. The reaction profile calculated by range-separated hybrid functional HSE06 agrees reasonably well with the RPA profile, which makes HSE06 a computationally less demanding alternative to RPA We also investigate the reaction of the Fe atom with water using DFT, RPA, and coupled-cluster through the perturbative triples complete basis set [CCSD(T)-3s3p-DKH/CBS] method. Local DFT methods significantly underestimate reaction barriers, while the reaction kinetics and thermodynamics from RPA agree with the reference CCSD(T) data. Both systems, i.e., the Fe atom and Fe(100), provide the same reaction mechanism, indicating that anaerobic corrosion is a stepwise process involving one-electron steps, with the first reaction step (formation of the HFeOH intermediate) representing the rate-limiting step.