ABSTRACT
Hydrocarbon fragmentation patterns are known to be profoundly affected by the type of metal used as the catalyst. For instance, metal-oxide-supported Ni cleaves linear alkanes to give methane as the predominant product. Supported Pt or Pt-Sn bimetallic catalysts have a high selectivity for dehydrocyclization of C6—C8 linear alkanes. Supported rhodium, on the other hand, exhibits a tendency to cleave linear hydrocarbons through a mechanism which favors internal bond hydrogenolysis under certain conditions. Variations in surface structure such as those presented above have led to a great deal of experimental interest in the effect of metal particle diameter on catalytic behavior. The effect of surface structure can be also be studied in a more direct fashion by performing reactions on single crystals of a metal that expose a known surface facet. On large metal particles and single crystals, it has been postulated that n-butane reacts through a 1,3-diadsorbed intermediate.
