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At least 1,189 records · Page 66

Water Promotion (or Inhibition) of Condensation Reactions Depends on Exposed Cerium Oxide Catalyst Facets

Nanoparticles with well-defined facets enable quantitative correlations between surface features and catalytic activity. In this work, we explore the role of geometric and acid–base properties in the mechanism of aldol condensation catalyzed by ceria nanoshapes. In the crucial C–C coupling step, the two carbonyl adsorbates are bound to two adjacent cations. On the CeO 2 (110) plane, all atoms lie on the same layer, favoring the interaction between adsorbates and facilitating the bimolecular C–C coupling. Thus, the initial unimolecular deprotonation is rate-limiting. In contrast, the (100) and (111) planes have an open structure with O on the top layer and Ce on the layer below. The former O layer interferes between adsorbates linked to Ce sites, making the C–C coupling rate-limiting. Water helps in overcoming this spatial hindrance by remote bond polarization via H-bonds. Therefore, water promotion is only observed on those planes for which the bimolecular step is rate-limiting.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Supportless, bismuth-modified palladium nanotubes with improved activity and stability for formic acid oxidation

Palladium nanotubes (PdNTs) were synthesized by templated vapor deposition and investigated for formic acid electrooxidation. Annealed PdNTs are 2.4 times more active (2.19 mA/cm 2 ) than commercial carbon-supported palladium (0.91 mA/cm 2 ) at 0.3 V vs RHE. Bismuth modification improved nanotube performance over 4 times (3.75 mA/cm 2 ) vs Pd/C and nearly 2 times vs unmodified PdNTs. A surface Bi coverage of 80% results in optimal site-specific activity by drastically reducing surface-poisoning CO generation during formic acid electrooxidation. The Bi-modified PdNTs are exceptionally stable, maintaining 2 times the area-normalized current density as Pd/C after 24 h at 0.2 V vs RHE. As a result, we attribute the enhanced activity and stability of the nanotube catalysts to the presence of highly coordinated surfaces, mimicking a flat polycrystal while retaining high surface area geometry.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Complex oxide growth using simultaneous in situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction and x-ray reflectivity: When is one layer complete?

During layer-by-layer homoepitaxial growth, both the Reflection High-Energy Electron Diffraction (RHEED) intensity and the x-ray reflection intensity will oscillate, and each complete oscillation indicates the addition of one monolayer of material. However, it is well documented, but not well understood, that the phase of the RHEED oscillations varies from growth to growth and thus the maxima in the RHEED intensity oscillations do not necessarily occur at the completion of a layer. Here, we demonstrate this by using simultaneous in situ x-ray reflectivity and RHEED to characterize layer-by-layer growth of SrTiO 3 . We show that we can control the RHEED oscillation phase by changing the pre-growth substrate annealing conditions, changing the RHEED oscillation phase by as much as 137°. In addition, during growth via pulsed laser deposition, the relaxation times between each laser pulse can be used to determine when a layer is complete, independent of the phase of the RHEED oscillation.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Defect state passivation at III-V oxide interfaces for complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor devices

The paper describes the reasons for the greater difficulty in the passivation of interface defects of III–V semiconductors like GaAs. These include the more complex reconstructions of the starting surface which already possess defect configurations, the possibility of injecting As antisites into the substrate which give rise to gap states, and the need to avoid As-As bonds and As dangling bonds which give rise to gap states. The nature of likely defect configurations in terms of their electronic structure is described. The benefits of diffusion barriers and surface nitridation are discussed.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Thermal transport in tantalum oxide films for memristive applications

The thermal conductivity of amorphous TaO x memristive films having variable oxygen content is measured using time domain thermoreflectance. Furthermore, the thermal transport is described by a two-partmodel where the electrical contribution is quantified via the Wiedemann-Franz relation and the vibrational contribution by the minimum thermal conductivity limit for amorphous solids. Additionally, the vibrational contribution remains constant near 0.9 W/mK regardless of oxygen concentration, while the electrical contribution varies from 0 to 3.3 W/mK. Thus, the dominant thermal carrier in TaO x switches between vibrations and charge carriers and is controllable either by oxygen content during deposition, or dynamically by field-induced charge state migration.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Many-body ab initio diffusion quantum Monte Carlo applied to the strongly correlated oxide NiO

We present a many-body diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (DMC) study of the bulk and defect properties of NiO. We find excellent agreement with experimental values, within 0.3%, 0.6%, and 3.5% for the lattice constant, cohesive energy, and bulk modulus, respectively. The quasiparticle bandgap was also computed, and the DMC result of 4.72 (0.17) eV compares well with the experimental value of 4.3 eV. Furthermore, DMC calculations of excited states at the L, Z, and the gamma point of the Brillouin zone reveal a flat upper valence band for NiO, in good agreement with Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy results. To study defect properties, we evaluated the formation energies of the neutral and charged vacancies of oxygen and nickel in NiO. A formation energy of 7.2 (0.15) eV was found for the oxygen vacancy under oxygen rich conditions. For the Ni vacancy, we obtained a formation energy of 3.2 (0.15) eV under Ni rich conditions. These results confirm that NiO occurs as a p-type material with the dominant intrinsic vacancy defect being Ni vacancy.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Towards a systematic assessment of errors in diffusion Monte Carlo calculations of semiconductors: Case study of zinc selenide and zinc oxide

The fixed node diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) method has attracted interest in recent years as a way to calculate properties of solid materials with high accuracy. However, the framework for the calculation of properties such as total energies, atomization energies, and excited state energies is not yet fully established. Several outstanding questions remain as to the effect of pseudopotentials, the magnitude of the fixed node error, and the size of supercell finite size effects. Here, we consider in detail the semiconductors ZnSe and ZnO and carry out systematic studies to assess the magnitude of the energy differences arising from controlled and uncontrolled approximations in DMC. The former include time step errors and supercell finite size effects for ground and optically excited states, and the latter include pseudopotentials, the pseudopotential localization approximation, and the fixed node approximation. We find that for these compounds, the errors can be controlled to good precision using modern computational resources and that quantum Monte Carlo calculations using Dirac-Fock pseudopotentials can offer good estimates of both cohesive energy and the gap of these systems. We do however observe differences in calculated optical gaps that arise when different pseudopotentials are used.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗