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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 937 records · Page 52
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2018

First-Principles Integrated Adsorption Modeling for Selective Capture of Uranium from Seawater by Polyamidoxime Sorbent Materials

Nuclear power is a relatively carbon-free energy source that has the capacity to be utilized today in an effort to stem the tides of global warming. The growing demand for nuclear energy, however, could put significant strain on our uranium ore resources, and the mining activities utilized to extract that ore can leave behind long-term environmental damage. A potential solution to enhance the supply of uranium fuel is to recover uranium from seawater using amidoximated adsorbent fibers. This technology has been studied for decades but is currently plagued by the material’s relatively poor selectivity of uranium over its main competitor vanadium. In this work, we investigate the binding schemes between uranium, vanadium, and the amidoxime functional groups on the adsorbent surface. Using quantum chemical methods, binding strengths are approximated for a set of complexation reactions between uranium and vanadium with amidoxime functionalities. Those approximations are then coupled with a comprehensive aqueous adsorption model developed in this work to simulate the adsorption of uranium and vanadium under laboratory conditions. Experimental adsorption studies with uranium and vanadium over a wide pH range are performed, and the data collected are compared against simulation results to validate the model. It was found that coupling ab initio calculations with process level adsorption modeling provides accurate predictions of the adsorption capacity and selectivity of the sorbent materials. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that this multiscale modeling paradigm could be utilized to aid in the selection of superior ligands or ligand compositions for the selective capture of metal ions. Furthermore, this first-principles integrated modeling approach opens the door to the in silico design of next-generation adsorbents with potentially superior efficiency and selectivity for uranium over vanadium in seawater.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2014

Half-metallic ferromagnetism in Cr-doped semiconducting Ge-chalcogenide: Density functional approach

A supercell approach has been used to calculate the electronic and magnetic properties of Cr-doped Ge chalcogenide, Ge{sub 1−x}Cr{sub x}Te (x = 0.25 and 0.125). The calculations have been performed using full potential Linear Augmented Plane Wave (FPLAPW) method within generalized gradient approximation (GGA) as exchange-correlation (XC) potential. The calculated results show that the doping of Cr induces the 100% spin polarization at Fermi level (EF) and showed the robust half metallic ferromagnetism in this compound. Thus, the compound at both dopant concentrations behave as dilute magnetic semiconductor (DMS) showing metallic property in majority and semiconducting for minority spin channels which is best suited for spintronic applications. The total magnetic moments of this compound are mainly due to Cr-d states present at E{sup F} with negligible contribution from electronic states of other atoms.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Exploring the dependence of gas cooling and heating functions on the incident radiation field with machine learning

ABSTRACT Gas cooling and heating functions play a crucial role in galaxy formation. But, it is computationally expensive to exactly compute these functions in the presence of an incident radiation field. These computations can be greatly sped up by using interpolation tables of pre-computed values, at the expense of making significant and sometimes even unjustified approximations. Here, we explore the capacity of machine learning to approximate cooling and heating functions with a generalized radiation field. Specifically, we use the machine learning algorithm XGBoost to predict cooling and heating functions calculated with the photoionization code cloudy at fixed metallicity, using different combinations of photoionization rates as features. We perform a constrained quadratic fit in metallicity to enable a fair comparison with traditional interpolation methods at arbitrary metallicity. We consider the relative importance of various photoionization rates through both a principal component analysis (PCA) and calculation of SHapley Additive exPlanation (shap) values for our XGBoost models. We use feature importance information to select different subsets of rates to use in model training. Our XGBoost models outperform a traditional interpolation approach at each fixed metallicity, regardless of feature selection. At arbitrary metallicity, we are able to reduce the frequency of the largest cooling and heating function errors compared to an interpolation table. We find that the primary bottleneck to increasing accuracy lies in accurately capturing the metallicity dependence. This study demonstrates the potential of machine learning methods such as XGBoost to capture the non-linear behaviour of cooling and heating functions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Push it to the limit: comparing periodic and local approaches to density functional theory for intermolecular interactions

With the aim of systematically comparing two popular approaches to density functional theory–all-electron calculations with local basis sets, and periodic calculations employing plane wave basis sets and norm-conserving pseudopotentials–we have computed complete-basis binding energies across the S22 set of intermolecular interactions, a dataset consisting of noncovalent interactions of small- and medium-sized molecules containing first- and second-row atoms, using the Troullier-Martins norm-conserving pseudopotentials with SPW92, a local spin-density approximation; and PBE, a generalised gradient approximation. Here, we have found that it is challenging to reach the basis set limit with these periodic calculations; for the methods and systems examined, a minimum vacuum distance of 30 Å between a system and its nearest images is necessary–unless some form of dipole correction is employed–as is a kinetic energy cutoff of at least 80 Ry. The trends in convergence with respect to vacuum size and kinetic energy cutoff are largely independent of the level of density functional approximation employed. A sense of the impact of each hyperparameter on basis set error provides a foundation for ensuring quality calculations in future studies and allows us to quantify the basis set errors incurred in existing studies on similar systems.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2014

Predicting critical temperatures of iron(II) spin crossover materials: Density functional theory plus U approach

A first-principles study of critical temperatures (T{sub c}) of spin crossover (SCO) materials requires accurate description of the strongly correlated 3d electrons as well as much computational effort. This task is still a challenge for the widely used local density or generalized gradient approximations (LDA/GGA) and hybrid functionals. One remedy, termed density functional theory plus U (DFT+U) approach, introduces a Hubbard U term to deal with the localized electrons at marginal computational cost, while treats the delocalized electrons with LDA/GGA. Here, we employ the DFT+U approach to investigate the T{sub c} of a pair of iron(II) SCO molecular crystals (α and β phase), where identical constituent molecules are packed in different ways. We first calculate the adiabatic high spin-low spin energy splitting ΔE{sub HL} and molecular vibrational frequencies in both spin states, then obtain the temperature dependent enthalpy and entropy changes (ΔH and ΔS), and finally extract T{sub c} by exploiting the ΔH/T − T and ΔS − T relationships. The results are in agreement with experiment. Analysis of geometries and electronic structures shows that the local ligand field in the α phase is slightly weakened by the H-bondings involving the ligand atoms and the specific crystal packing style. We find that this effect is largely responsible for the difference in T{sub c} of the two phases. This study shows the applicability of the DFT+U approach for predicting T{sub c} of SCO materials, and provides a clear insight into the subtle influence of the crystal packing effects on SCO behavior.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2016

Dynamics of water confined in lyotropic liquid crystals: Molecular dynamics simulations of the dynamic structure factor

The properties of water under confinement are of practical and fundamental interest. Here in this work we study the properties of water in the self-assembled lyotropic phases of gemini surfactants with a focus on testing the standard analysis of quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS) experiments. In QENS experiments the dynamic structure factor is measured and fit to models to extract the translational diffusion constant, D T , and rotational relaxation time, τ R . We test this procedure by using simulation results for the dynamic structure factor, extracting the dynamic parameters from the fit as is typically done in experiments, and comparing the values to those directly measured in the simulations. We find that the decoupling approximation, where the intermediate scattering function is assumed to be a product of translational and rotational contributions, is quite accurate. The jump-diffusion and isotropic rotation models, however, are not accurate when the degree of confinement is high. In particular, the exponential approximations for the intermediate scattering function fail for highly confined water and the values of D T and τ R can differ from the measured value by as much as a factor of two. Other models have more fit parameters, however, and with the range of energies and wave-vectors accessible to QENS, the typical analysis appears to be the best choice. In the most confined lamellar phase, the dynamics are sufficiently slow that QENS does not access a large enough time scale and neutron spin echo measurements would be a valuable technique in addition to QENS.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Ab Initio Investigation of Structural Stability and Electronic and Magnetic Properties of the Half-Heusler Alloys: MTiSb (M = Fe, Co, and Ni)

The structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of the half-Heusler MTiSb (M = Fe, Co, Ni) compounds have been examined using the first-principles calculations with the full-potential linear augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) method within the density functional theory. The electronic structures and magnetic properties of MTiSb (M = Fe, Co, Ni) are studied. It is found that the calculated lattice parameter is in good agreement with the theoretical values. Using the general gradient approximation (GGA), we observe that for the three compounds, the α phase is more stable than β and γ phases. CoTiSb is a semiconductor, NiTiSb is a metal, while the FeTiSb compound is a half-metallic, and the total magnetic moments are 0.00085, − 0.26074, and 0.99353 μ B, respectively, which is in agreement with the Slater–Pauling rule, Furthermore, the origin for the appearance of the half-metallic band gap in the FeTiSb compound was also discussed.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2014

Symmetry-projected wave functions in quantum Monte Carlo calculations

Here, we consider symmetry-projected Hartree-Fock trial wave functions in constrained-path Monte Carlo (CPMC) calculations. Previous CPMC calculations have mostly employed Hartree-Fock (HF) trial wave functions, restricted or unrestricted. The symmetry-projected HF approach results in a hierarchy of wave functions with increasing quality: the more symmetries that are broken and restored in a self-consistent manner, the higher the quality of the trial wave function. This hierarchy is approximately maintained in CPMC calculations: the accuracy in the energy increases and the statistical variance decreases when further symmetries are broken and restored. Significant improvement is achieved in CPMC with the best symmetry-projected trial wave functions over those from simple HF. We analyze and quantify the behavior using the two-dimensional repulsive Hubbard model as an example. In the sign-problem-free region, where CPMC can be made exact but a constraint is deliberately imposed here, spin-projected wave functions remove the constraint bias. Away from half filling, spatial symmetry restoration in addition to that of the spin leads to highly accurate results from CPMC. Since the computational cost of symmetry-projected HF trial wave functions in CPMC can be made to scale algebraically with system size, this provides a potentially general approach for accurate calculations in many-fermion systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Calculation of Dynamical Response Functions Using a Bound-State Method

Abstract We investigate a method to extract response functions (dynamical polarisabilities) directly from a bound-state approach applied to calculations of perturbation-induced reactions. The use of a square-integrable basis leads to a response in the form of a sum of $$\delta $$ δ functions. We integrate this over energy and fit a smooth function to the resulting stepwise-continuous one. Its derivative gives the final approximation to the physical response function. We show that the method reproduces analytical results where known, and analyse the details for a variety of models. We apply it to some simple models, using the stochastic variational method as the numerical method. Albeit we find that this approach, and other numerical techniques, have some difficulties with the threshold behavior in coupled-channel problems with multiple thresholds, its stochastic nature allows us to extract robust results even for such cases.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2017

Exchange-correlation energies of atoms from efficient density functionals: influence of the electron density

The primary goal of Kohn–Sham density functional theory is to evaluate the exchange-correlation contribution to electronic properties. However, the accuracy of a density functional can be affected by the electron density. Here we apply the nonempirical Tao–Mo (TM) semilocal functional to study the influence of the electron density on the exchange and correlation energies of atoms and ions, and compare the results with the commonly used nonempirical semilocal functionals local spin-density approximation (LSDA), Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE), Tao–Perdew–Staroverov–Scuseria (TPSS), and hybrid functional PBE0. We find that the spin-restricted Hartree–Fock density yields the exchange and correlation energies in good agreement with the Optimized Effective Potential method, particularly for spherical atoms and ions. However, the errors of these semilocal and hybrid functionals become larger for self-consistent densities. We further find that the quality of the electron density have greater effect on the exchange-correlation energies of kinetic energy density-dependent meta-GGA functionals TPSS and TM than on those of the LSDA and GGA, and therefore, should have greater influence on the performance of meta-GGA functionals. Lastly, we show that the influence of the density quality on PBE0 is slightly reduced, compared to that of PBE, due to the exact mixing.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2012

Light-Front Holographic QCD

The relation between the hadronic short-distance constituent quark and gluon particle limit and the long-range confining domain is yet one of the most challenging aspects of particle physics due to the strong coupling nature of Quantum Chromodynamics, the fundamental theory of the strong interactions. The central question is how one can compute hadronic properties from first principles; i.e., directly from the QCD Lagrangian. The most successful theoretical approach thus far has been to quantize QCD on discrete lattices in Euclidean space-time. Lattice numerical results follow from computation of frame-dependent moments of distributions in Euclidean space and dynamical observables in Minkowski spacetime, such as the time-like hadronic form factors, are not amenable to Euclidean lattice computations. The Dyson-Schwinger methods have led to many important insights, such as the infrared fixed point behavior of the strong coupling constant, but in practice, the analyses are limited to ladder approximation in Landau gauge. Baryon spectroscopy and the excitation dynamics of nucleon resonances encoded in the nucleon transition form factors can provide fundamental insight into the strong-coupling dynamics of QCD. New theoretical tools are thus of primary interest for the interpretation of the results expected at the new mass scale and kinematic regions accessible to the JLab 12 GeV Upgrade Project. The AdS/CFT correspondence between gravity or string theory on a higher-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) space and conformal field theories in physical space-time has led to a semiclassical approximation for strongly-coupled QCD, which provides physical insights into its nonperturbative dynamics. The correspondence is holographic in the sense that it determines a duality between theories in different number of space-time dimensions. This geometric approach leads in fact to a simple analytical and phenomenologically compelling nonperturbative approximation to the full light-front QCD Hamiltonian 'Light-Front Holography'. Light-Front Holography is in fact one of the most remarkable features of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The Hamiltonian equation of motion in the light-front (LF) is frame independent and has a structure similar to eigenmode equations in AdS space. This makes a direct connection of QCD with AdS/CFT methods possible. Remarkably, the AdS equations correspond to the kinetic energy terms of the partons inside a hadron, whereas the interaction terms build confinement and correspond to the truncation of AdS space in an effective dual gravity approximation. One can also study the gauge/gravity duality starting from the bound-state structure of hadrons in QCD quantized in the light-front. The LF Lorentz-invariant Hamiltonian equation for the relativistic bound-state system is P{sub {mu}}P{sup {mu}}|{psi}(P)> = (P{sup +}P{sup -} - P{sub {perpendicular}}{sup 2})|{psi}(P)> = M{sup 2}|{psi}(P)>, P{sup {+-}} = P{sup 0} {+-} P{sup 3}, where the LF time evolution operator P{sup -} is determined canonically from the QCD Lagrangian. To a first semiclassical approximation, where quantum loops and quark masses are not included, this leads to a LF Hamiltonian equation which describes the bound-state dynamics of light hadrons in terms of an invariant impact variable {zeta} which measures the separation of the partons within the hadron at equal light-front time {tau} = x{sup 0} + x{sup 3}. This allows us to identify the holographic variable z in AdS space with an impact variable {zeta}. The resulting Lorentz-invariant Schroedinger equation for general spin incorporates color confinement and is systematically improvable. Light-front holographic methods were originally introduced by matching the electromagnetic current matrix elements in AdS space with the corresponding expression using LF theory in physical space time. It was also shown that one obtains identical holographic mapping using the matrix elements of the energy-momentum tensor by perturbing the AdS metric around its static solution. A gravity dual to QCD is not known, but the mechanisms of confinement can be incorporated in the gauge/gravity correspondence by modifying the AdS geometry in the large infrared (IR) domain z {approx} 1 = {Lambda}{sub QCD}, which also sets the scale of the strong interactions. In this simplified approach we consider the propagation of hadronic modes in a fixed effective gravitational background asymptotic to AdS space, which encodes salient properties of the QCD dual theory, such as the ultraviolet (UV) conformal limit at the AdS boundary, as well as modifications of the background geometry in the large z IR region to describe confinement. The modified theory generates the point-like hard behavior expected from QCD, instead of the soft behavior characteristic of extended objects.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2013

Band gaps in InN/GaN superlattices: Nonpolar and polar growth directions

The electronic structures of nonpolar short-period InN/GaN superlattices (SLs) grown in the wurtzite a- and m-directions have been calculated and compared to previous calculations for polar superlattices (grown in the c-direction). The variation of the band gaps with the composition (m, n) of the mInN/nGaN unit cells of the superlattices was examined. The band structures were obtained by self-consistent calculations based on the local density approximation to the density functional theory using the Linear-Muffin-Tin-Orbital method with a semi-empirical correction for the band gaps. The calculated band gaps and their pressure coefficients for nonpolar superlattices are similar to those calculated for bulk InGaN alloys with an equivalent In/Ga concentration ratio. This is very different from what has been found in polar superlattices where the band gaps are much smaller and vanish when the number m of InN layers in the unit cell exceeds three. A strong internal electric field is responsible for this behavior of polar structures. Experimental photoluminescence data for polar SLs agree very well with gaps calculated for the nonpolar structures. It is suggested that this is caused by screening of the electric field in the polar structures by carriers originating from unintentional defects.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2013

Spin and orbital magnetism of coinage metal trimers (Cu{sub 3}, Ag{sub 3}, Au{sub 3}): A relativistic density functional theory study

We have demonstrated electronic structure and magnetic properties of Cu{sub 3}, Ag{sub 3} and Au{sub 3} trimers using a full potential local orbital method in the framework of relativistic density functional theory. We have also shown that the non-relativistic generalized gradient approximation for the exchange-correlation energy functional gives reliable magnetic properties in coinage metal trimers compared to experiment. In addition we have indicated that the spin-orbit coupling changes the structure and magnetic properties of gold trimer while the structure and magnetic properties of copper and silver trimers are marginally affected. A significant orbital moment of 0.21μ{sub B} was found for most stable geometry of the gold trimer whereas orbital magnetism is almost quenched in the copper and silver trimers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Unveiling the Role of Surface Ir-Oxo Species in O 2 Evolution at IrO 2 Electrocatalysts via Embedded Cluster Multireference Calculations

Understanding the mechanisms driving the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) on iridium oxide (IrO 2 )-based catalysts is essential to improving their performance and enabling an actual scale-up of water-splitting photoelectrochemical cells. The mechanistic pathways at IrO 2 interfaces have been extensively investigated computationally using density functional theory (DFT), which predicts a high-energy barrier for the last step of the OER of molecular oxygen detachment and release from the catalyst surface. Nevertheless, surface O 2 over- and under-binding results by standard generalized gradient approximation and hybrid density functionals, respectively, call for further analysis of this crucial step via multireference methods. Aiming at unveiling the nature of such a barrier, we hereby address the formation of O 2 from the most-stable IrO 2 (110) surface with both periodic DFT and an electrostatic embedded cluster approach at the n-electron valence-state perturbation theory. With this multireference approach, we find a value for the aforementioned energy barrier that is much closer to experimental indications than DFT ones. Here, an in-depth analysis of the involved molecular orbitals suggests that the origin of this barrier is related to the breaking of a π interaction between O 2 and Ir surface atom and to a significant additional O 2 interaction with adjacent electrophilic Ir-oxo species, which is present under experimental operating conditions. Besides shedding light on the mechanism of the OER on IrO 2 , these findings point out the importance of multireference methods for dissecting complex reactions at electrocatalytic interfaces and pave the route for further investigations with effective embedding approaches.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2013

Dark-matter harmonics beyond annual modulation

The count rate at dark-matter direct-detection experiments should modulate annually due to the motion of the Earth around the Sun. We show that higher-frequency modulations, including daily modulation, are also present and in some cases are nearly as strong as the annual modulation. These higher-order modes are particularly relevant if (i) the dark matter is light, O(10) GeV, (ii) the scattering is inelastic, or (iii) velocity substructure is present; for these cases, the higher-frequency modes are potentially observable at current and ton-scale detectors. We derive simple expressions for the harmonic modes as functions of the astrophysical and geophysical parameters describing the Earth's orbit, using an updated expression for the Earth's velocity that corrects a common error in the literature. For an isotropic halo velocity distribution, certain ratios of the modes are approximately constant as a function of nuclear recoil energy. Anisotropic distributions can also leave observable features in the harmonic spectrum. Consequently, the higher-order harmonic modes are a powerful tool for identifying a potential signal from interactions with the Galactic dark-matter halo.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗