Dynamic-template-directed multiscale assembly for large-area coating of highly-aligned conjugated polymer thin films
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Here, lattice dynamics and elasticity for the high-temperature ε phase (body-centered cubic; bcc) of plutonium is predicted utilizing first-principles electronic structure coupled with a self-consistent phonon method that takes phonon-phonon interaction and strong anharmonicity into account. These predictions establish the first sensible lattice-dynamics and elasticity data on ε-Pu. The atomic forces required for the phonon scheme are highly accurate and derived from the total energies obtained from relativistic and parameter-free density-functional theory. The results appear reasonable but no data exist to compare with except those from dynamical mean-field theory that suggest ε-plutonium is mechanically unstable. Fundamental knowledge and understanding of the high-temperature bcc phase, that is generally present in all actinide metals before melting, is critically important for a proper interpretation of the phase diagram as well as practical modeling of high-temperature properties.
Here metal-metal oxide (M-MO) inverse catalysts are broadly applied. Brønsted acid sites on the oxide overlayers are often hypothesized to drive selective C-O bond activation. However, the Brønsted acid site nature and dynamics under working conditions remain poorly understood due to multiple materials functionalities. Here, we investigate the formation and the dynamics of Brønsted acid and redox sites on PtWO x /C under working conditions. DFT-based thermodynamic calculations and microkinetic modeling reveal a complex interplay between Brønsted acid and redox sites and potentially fast catalyst dynamics at comparable time scales to the chemistry. Combining in situ characterization and probe chemistry, we demonstrate that the density of Brønsted acid sites on the PtWO x /C inverse catalyst could be modulated by up to two orders of magnitude by altering the reaction parameters and by the chemistry itself. We elicit an order of magnitude increase in the acid-catalyzed dehydration average reaction rate by periodic hydrogen pulsing.
Here, the interface between a solid and a complex multi-component liquid forms a unique reaction environment whose structure and composition can significantly deviate from either bulk or liquid phase and is poorly understood due the innate difficulty to obtain molecular level information. Feldspar minerals, as typified by the Ca-end member Anorthite, serve as prototypical model systems to assess the reactivity and ion mobility at solid/water-bearing supercritical fluid (WBSF) interfaces due to recent X-ray based measurements that provide information on water-film formation, and cation vacancies at these surfaces. Using density functional theory based molecular dynamics, which allows the evaluation of reactivity and condensed phase dynamics on equal footing, we report on the structure and dynamics of water nucleation and surface aggregation, carbonation and Ca mobilization under geologic carbon sequestration scenarios (T = 323 K and P = 90 bar). We find that water has a strong enthalpic preference for aggregation on a Ca-rich, O-terminated anorthite (001) surface, but entropy strongly hinders the film formation at very low water concentrations. Carbonation reactions readily occur at electron-rich terminal Oxygen sites adjacent to cation vacancies, when in contact with supercritical CO 2 . Cation vacancies of this type can form readily in the presence of a water layer that allows for facile and enthalpicly favorable Ca 2+ extraction and solvation. Apart from providing unprecedented molecular level detail of a complex three component (mineral, water and scCO 2 ) system), this work highlights the ability of modern capabilities of AIMD methods to begin to qualitatively and quantitatively address structure and reactivity at solid-liquid interfaces of high chemical complexity. This work was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy (M.-S. L., B. P. M. and V.-A. G.) and the Office of Basic Energy Science, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences (R.R.), and performed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). PNNL is a multi-program national laboratory operated for DOE by Battelle. Computational resources were provided by PNNL’s Platform for Institutional Computing (PIC), the W. R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL), a national scientific user facility sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research located at PNNL and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Accurate simulation of the non-adiabatic dynamics of molecules in excited electronic states is key to understanding molecular photo-physical processes. Here we present a novel method, based on a semiclassical approximation, that is as efficient as the commonly used mean field Ehrenfest or ad hoc surface hopping methods and properly accounts for interference and decoherence effects. This novel method is an extension of Heller's thawed Gaussian wave-packet dynamics that includes coupling between potential energy surfaces. By studying several standard test problems we demonstrate that the accuracy of the method can be systematically improved while maintaining high efficiency. The method is suitable for investigating the role of quantum coherence in the non-adiabatic dynamics of many-atom molecules.
Amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) is often a critical transient phase in the formation of crystalline phases of CaCO 3 via dehydration of hydrated ACC. The behavior of the water molecules plays a pivotal role in this transformation. We report here the dynamics of water molecules in ACC at hydration levels from CaCO 3 ·1H 2 O to CaCO 3 ·0.25H 2 O using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Due to the presence of highly hydrophilic Ca 2+ and the strong H-bond acceptor CO 3 2- , most of the water molecules in our simulations have restricted translational and orientational dynamics. These are referred here as ‘slow water’. However, a small fraction of them show high diffusivity at all hydration states and are referred here as ‘fast water’. The computed diffusion coefficients of the slow waters, as extrapolated from simulation results, yield diffusion distances of the order of μm on the 1 hour time scale, consistent with rapid dehydration of ACC nano-particles in the laboratory. We correlate our fast waters with the water molecules in the percolating water-rich, Ca 2+ -deficient nano-pores in the structure of Goodwin et al. [Chem. Mater., 2010, 22, 3197], obtained by analysis of X-ray scattering data, and our slow waters with those in the Ca 2+ -rich volumes with less water in their model. The fast waters can be considered to be free rotors on the ns time scale and have orders of magnitude shorter rotational relaxation times than the slow waters.
The quantized Hamiltonian dynamics (QHD) theory provides a hierarchy of approximations to quantum dynamics in the Heisenberg representation. We apply the first-order QHD to study charge transport in molecular crystals and find that the obtained equations of motion coincide with the Ehrenfest theory, which is the most widely used mixed quantum-classical approach. Quantum initial conditions required for the QHD variables make the dynamics surpass Ehrenfest. Most importantly, the first-order QHD already captures the low-temperature regime of charge transport, as observed experimentally. We expect that simple extensions to higher-order QHDs can efficiently represent other quantum effects, such as phonon zero-point energy and loss of coherence in the electronic subsystem caused by phonons.
We study the dynamics of skyrmions in a metallic chiral magnet. First, we show that skyrmions can be created dynamically by destabilizing the ferromagnetic background state through a spin polarized current. We then treat skyrmions as rigid particles and derive the corresponding equation of motion. The dynamics of skyrmions is dominated by the Magnus force, which accounts for the weak pinning of skyrmions observed in experiments. Finally, we discuss the quantum motion of skyrmions.
Abstract not provided
In this work, we derive the interface exchange boundary conditions for the classical linear dynamics of magnetization in ferromagnetic layers with the interface Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (IDMI). We show that IDMI leads to pinning of dynamic magnetization at the interface. An unusual peculiarity of the IDMI-based pinning is that its scales as the spin-wave wave number. We incorporate these boundary conditions into an existing numerical model for the dynamics of the Damon-Eshbach spin wave in ferromagnetic films. IDMI affects the dispersion and the frequency non-reciprocity of the travelling Damon-Eshbach spin wave. For a broad range of film thicknesses L and wave numbers, the results of the numerical simulations of the spin wave dispersion are in a good agreement with a simple analytical expression, which shows that the contribution of IDMI to the dispersion scales as 1/L, similarly to the effect of other types of interfacial anisotropy. Suggestions to experimentalists how to detect the presence of IDMI in a spin wave experiment are given.
To systematically manage the energy consumption of existing buildings, the government has to enforce greenhouse gas reduction policies. However, most of the policies are not properly executed because they do not consider various factors from the urban level perspective. Therefore, this study aimed to conduct a dynamic analysis of an urban-based low-carbon policy using system dynamics, with a specific focus on housing and green space. This study was conducted in the following steps: (i) establishing the variables of urban-based greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions; (ii) creating a stock/flow diagram of urban-based GHGs emissions; (iii) conducting an information analysis using the system dynamics; and (iv) proposing the urban-based low-carbon policy. If a combined energy policy that uses the housing sector (30%) and the green space sector (30%) at the same time is implemented, 2020 CO{sub 2} emissions will be 7.23 million tons (i.e., 30.48% below 2020 business-as-usual), achieving the national carbon emissions reduction target (26.9%). The results of this study could contribute to managing and improving the fundamentals of the urban-based low-carbon policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
We show that a single change in the derivation of the linearized semiclassical-initial value representation (LSC-IVR or “classical Wigner approximation”) results in a classical dynamics which conserves the quantum Boltzmann distribution. We rederive the (standard) LSC-IVR approach by writing the (exact) quantum time-correlation function in terms of the normal modes of a free ring-polymer (i.e., a discrete imaginary-time Feynman path), taking the limit that the number of polymer beads N → ∞, such that the lowest normal-mode frequencies take their “Matsubara” values. The change we propose is to truncate the quantum Liouvillian, not explicitly in powers of ħ{sup 2} at ħ{sup 0} (which gives back the standard LSC-IVR approximation), but in the normal-mode derivatives corresponding to the lowest Matsubara frequencies. The resulting “Matsubara” dynamics is inherently classical (since all terms O(ħ{sup 2}) disappear from the Matsubara Liouvillian in the limit N → ∞) and conserves the quantum Boltzmann distribution because the Matsubara Hamiltonian is symmetric with respect to imaginary-time translation. Numerical tests show that the Matsubara approximation to the quantum time-correlation function converges with respect to the number of modes and gives better agreement than LSC-IVR with the exact quantum result. Matsubara dynamics is too computationally expensive to be applied to complex systems, but its further approximation may lead to practical methods.
For over a century, vibrational spectroscopy has enhanced the study of materials. Yet, assignment of particular molecular motions to vibrational excitations has relied on indirect methods. Here, we demonstrate that applying group theoretical methods to the dynamic pair distribution function analysis of neutron scattering data provides direct access to the individual atomic displacements responsible for these excitations. Applied to the molecule-based frustrated magnet with a potential magnetic valence-bond state, LiZn{sub 2}Mo{sub 3}O{sub 8}, this approach allows direct assignment of the constrained rotational mode of Mo{sub 3}O{sub 13} clusters and internal modes of MoO{sub 6} polyhedra. We anticipate that coupling this well known data analysis technique with dynamic pair distribution function analysis will have broad application in connecting structural dynamics to physical properties in a wide range of molecular and solid state systems.
With quasi-elastic neutron scattering, we study the single-particle dynamics of the water confined in a hydrophilic silica material, MCM-41, at 4 kbar. A dynamic crossover phenomenon is observed at 219 K. We compare this dynamic crossover with the one observed at ambient pressure and find that (a) above the crossover temperature, the temperature dependence of the characteristic relaxation time at ambient pressure exhibits a more evident super-Arrhenius behavior than that at 4 kbar. Especially, at temperatures below about 230 K, the relaxation time at 4 kbar is even smaller than that at ambient pressure. This feature is different from many other liquids. (b) Below the crossover temperature, the Arrhenius behavior found at ambient pressure has a larger activation energy compared to the one found at 4 kbar. We ascribe the former to the difference between the local structure of the low-density liquid (LDL) phase and that of the high-density liquid (HDL) phase, and the latter to the difference between the strength of the hydrogen bond of the LDL and that of the HDL. Therefore, we conclude that the phenomena observed in this paper are consistent with the LDL-to-HDL liquid-liquid transition hypothesis.
In an earlier work [V. A. Annamareddy et al., Phys. Rev. E 89, 010301(R) (2014)], we showed the manifestation of dynamical heterogeneity (DH)—the presence of clustered mobile and immobile regions—in UO{sub 2}, a model type II superionic conductor. In the current work, we demonstrate the mechanism of dynamic facilitation (DF) in two superionic conductors (CaF{sub 2} and UO{sub 2}) using atomistic simulations. Using the mobility transfer function, DF is shown to vary non-monotonically with temperature with the intensity of DF peaking at temperatures close to the superionic transition temperature (T{sub λ}). Both the metrics quantifying DH and DF show remarkable correspondence implying that DF, in the framework of kinematically constrained models, underpins the heterogeneous dynamics in type II superionic conductors.
In this work, we have first employed the combined quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) method to study the photodissociation mechanism of thioacetic acid CH{sub 3}C(O)SH in the S{sub 1}, T{sub 1}, and S{sub 0} states in argon matrix. CH{sub 3}C(O)SH is treated quantum mechanically using the complete active space self-consistent field and complete active space second-order perturbation theory methods; argon matrix is described classically using Lennard-Jones potentials. We find that the C-S bond fission is predominant due to its small barriers of ca. 3.0 and 1.0 kcal/mol in the S{sub 1} and T{sub 1} states. It completely suppresses the nearby C—C bond fission. After the bond fission, the S{sub 1} radical pair of CH{sub 3}CO and SH can decay to the S{sub 0} and T{sub 1} states via internal conversion and intersystem crossing, respectively. In the S{sub 0} state, the radical pair can either recombine to form CH{sub 3}C(O)SH or proceed to form molecular products of CH{sub 2}CO and H{sub 2}S. We have further employed our recently developed QM/MM generalized trajectory-based surface-hopping method to simulate the photodissociation dynamics of CH{sub 3}C(O)SH. In 1 ps dynamics simulation, 56% trajectories stay at the Franck-Condon region; the S{sub 1} C—S bond fission takes place in the remaining 44% trajectories. Among all nonadiabatic transitions, the S{sub 1} → S{sub 0} internal conversion is major (55%) but the S{sub 1} → T{sub 1} intersystem crossing is still comparable and cannot be ignored, which accounts for 28%. Finally, we have found a radical channel generating the molecular products of CH{sub 2}CO and H{sub 2}S, which is complementary to the concerted molecular channel. The present work sets the stage for simulating photodissociation dynamics of similar thio-carbonyl systems in matrix.
A diabatic three-sheeted six-dimensional potential-energy surface has been constructed for the ground state and the lowest excited state of the PH{sub 3}{sup +} cation. Coupling terms of Jahn-Teller and pseudo-Jahn-Teller origin up to eighth order had to be included to describe the pronounced anharmonicity of the surface due to multiple conical intersections. The parameters of the diabatic Hamiltonian have been optimized by fitting the eigenvalues of the potential-energy matrix to ab initio data calculated at the CASSCF/MRCI level employing the correlation-consistent triple-ζ basis. The theoretical photoelectron spectrum of phosphine and the non-adiabatic nuclear dynamics of the phosphine cation have been computed by propagating nuclear wave packets with the multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree method. The theoretical photoelectron bands obtained by Fourier transformation of the autocorrelation function agree well with the experimental results. It is shown that the ultrafast non-radiative decay dynamics of the first excited state of PH{sub 3}{sup +} is dominated by the exceptionally strong Jahn-Teller coupling of the asymmetric bending vibrational mode together with a hyperline of conical intersections with the electronic ground state induced by the umbrella mode. Time-dependent population probabilities have been computed for the three adiabatic electronic states. The non-adiabatic Jahn-Teller dynamics within the excited state takes place within ≈5 fs. Almost 80% of the excited-state population decay to the ground state within about 10 fs. The wave packets become highly complex and delocalized after 20 fs and no further significant transfer of electronic population seems to occur up to 100 fs propagation time.
The dynamics of N-methylpyrrole following excitation at wavelengths in the range 241.5-217.0 nm were studied using a combination of time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (TRPES), ab initio quantum dynamics calculations using the multi-layer multi-configurational time-dependent Hartree method, as well as high-level photoionization cross section calculations. Excitation at 241.5 and 236.2 nm results in population of the A{sub 2}(πσ{sup ∗}) state, in agreement with previous studies. Excitation at 217.0 nm prepares the previously neglected B{sub 1}(π3p{sub y}) Rydberg state, followed by prompt internal conversion to the A{sub 2}(πσ{sup ∗}) state. In contrast with the photoinduced dynamics of pyrrole, the lifetime of the wavepacket in the A{sub 2}(πσ{sup ∗}) state was found to vary with excitation wavelength, decreasing by one order of magnitude upon tuning from 241.5 nm to 236.2 nm and by more than three orders of magnitude when excited at 217.0 nm. The order of magnitude difference in lifetimes measured at the longer excitation wavelengths is attributed to vibrational excitation in the A{sub 2}(πσ{sup ∗}) state, facilitating wavepacket motion around the potential barrier in the N–CH{sub 3} dissociation coordinate.