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At least 127 records · Page 7

Identifying Order and Disorder in Double Four-Membered Rings via Raman Spectroscopy during Crystallization of LTA Zeolite

Fluoride (F – ) has been essential for the synthesis of low-defect siliceous zeolites. It has been hypothesized that F – balances the positive charges from organic structure-directing agents (OSDAs) and stabilizes key building units during zeolite crystallization such as the double four-membered ring (D4R). However, due to the lack of characterization techniques for investigating medium-range structures, including rings and cages formed during zeolite crystallization, the roles of F – in stabilizing building units and maintaining local charge balance during zeolite assembly are not yet fully understood. Here, the crystallization of siliceous Linde type A (LTA) zeolite in the presence of F – was investigated using Raman spectroscopy and periodic density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We have discovered that the F – -filled double four-membered ring (F – /D4R) and the empty D4R exhibit rather distinct Raman features. Both the F – /D4R and empty D4R are formed in the LTA zeolite synthesized in the presence of F – using 1,2-dimethyl-3-(4-methylbenzyl) imidazolium as the OSDA. Observed Raman bands of the F – /D4R and empty D4R, along with predictive DFT calculations on LTA supercells, reveal an ordered distribution of these two D4R units in the final as-made LTA zeolite. The discovery of these distinct Raman signatures of F – /D4R and empty D4R units opens an interesting new window for studying defects in the D4R during zeolite formation. In particular, we have observed variation in Raman intensities of F – /D4R and empty D4R bands during LTA crystallization; periodic DFT calculations indicate that the observed Raman behavior is consistent with empty D4R units containing one or two Si vacancies surrounded by Q 3 Si—consistent also with solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance measurement. These defects appear to heal during further crystallization, leading to the formation of defect-free LTA zeolite crystals. Altogether, our results provide deeper understanding on the roles of F – in charge balancing and stabilizing intact D4R units during zeolite formation.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Short-Range Order Tunes Optical Properties in Long-Range Disordered ZnSnN2-ZnO Alloy

Local site ordering offers a new paradigm for property control in functional materials. However, systems that exhibit a propensity for local order and global disorder are often challenging to characterize, and demonstrations of ordering-induced property tuning are few and far between. Here, we demonstrate that short-range ordering tunes the optical absorption edge in the long-range disordered alloy system (ZnSnN2)1-x(ZnO)2x at x = 0.25. We use combinatorial cosputtering to synthesize a set of thin-film samples spanning this alloy space. X-ray diffraction demonstrates lattice contraction as a function of alloy composition, confirming that a mixed-anion and -cation alloy has been synthesized. Using N and O K-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure in conjunction with simulations of cation-disordered supercell structures, we find that samples exhibit octet-rule-breaking motifs around both anions. Upon annealing at an alloy composition of x = 0.25, X-ray absorption analysis suggests that local motif structure shifts toward octet-rule-conserving while long-range disorder is maintained. Spectroscopic ellipsometry reveals that local ordering increases the absorption edge energy at constant composition. Additionally, alloy-induced optical absorption edge tuning is demonstrated. This work paves the way toward property tuning with short-range ordering in (ZnSnN2)1-x(ZnO)2x and beyond.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Polymorphism and Phase Control in Dion–Jacobson 2D 3-(Aminomethyl)piperidinium-Based Metal Iodide Perovskites

Two-dimensional halide perovskites exhibit rich structural diversity and tunable optoelectronic properties, making them promising materials for energy, sensing, and photonic applications. In this work, we report the structural mapping of four distinct polymorphs, γ (P2 1 /c), β (P4/mbm), α (P4/mmm), and δ (Cmcm) in the two-dimensional iodoplumbate, iodostannate, and iodogermanate perovskite so-called Dion-Jacobson series (3AMP)MI4 (M = Sn, Pb, Ge), where 3AMP is 3-(aminomethyl)piperidinium. The phases exhibit systematic evolution in octahedral distortion, lattice symmetry, and metal–halide geometry, enabling structural control over optoelectronic properties. Notably, the α-phase of (3AMP)SnI 4 represents a rare, ambient-stable, high-symmetry structure for Sn-based perovskites, without a phase transition down to 100 K. Variable-temperature single-crystal diffraction, powder x-ray diffraction (PXRD), and calorimetry reveal metal- and temperature-dependent polymorph interconversions, including the emergence of long range supercell reflections in Pb-rich compositions at low temperature. Optical spectroscopy and photoelectron yield spectroscopy confirm band gap tunability and band alignment trends, highlighting symmetry-dependent shifts and anomalous band gap bowing in mixed-metal systems, verified by electronic structure calculations. Calculations additionally indicate that the higher symmetry phases have reduced electron and hole effective masses compared to the lower symmetry phases.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Unveiling the Finite Temperature Physics of Hydrogen Chains via Auxiliary Field Quantum Monte Carlo

The ability to accurately predict the finite temperature properties and phase diagrams of realistic quantum solids is central to uncovering new phases and engineering materials with novel properties ripe for device applications. Nonetheless, there remain comparatively few many-body techniques capable of elucidating the finite temperature physics of solids from first principles. Here, we take a significant step toward developing such a technique by generalizing our previous, exact fully ab initio finite temperature Auxiliary Field Quantum Monte Carlo (FT-AFQMC) method to model periodic solids and employing it to uncover the finite temperature physics of periodic hydrogen chains. Our chains’ unit cells consist of 10 hydrogen atoms modeled in a minimal basis, and we sample 5 k-points from the first Brillouin zone to arrive at a supercell consisting of 50 orbitals and 50 electrons. Based upon our calculations of these chains’ many-body energies, free energies, entropies, heat capacities, double and natural occupancies, and charge and spin correlation functions, we outline their metal–insulator and magnetic ordering as a function of both H–H bond distance and temperature. At low temperatures approaching the ground state, we observe both metal–insulator and ferromagnetic–antiferromagnetic crossovers at bond lengths between 0.5 and 0.75 Å. We then demonstrate how this low-temperature ordering evolves into a metallic phase with decreasing magnetic order at higher temperatures. In order to contextualize our results, we compare the features we observe to those previously seen in one-dimensional, half-filled Hubbard models at finite temperature and in ground state hydrogen chains. Interestingly, we identify signatures of the Pomeranchuk effect in hydrogen chains for the first time and show that spin and charge excitations that typically arise at distinct temperatures in the Hubbard model are indistinguishably coupled in these systems. Beyond qualitatively revealing the many-body phase behavior of hydrogen chains in a numerically exact manner without invoking the phaseless approximation, our efforts shed light on the further theoretical developments that will be required to construct the phase diagrams of the more complex transition metal, lanthanide, and actinide solids of longstanding interest to physicists.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Shadow Molecular Dynamics and Atomic Cluster Expansions for Flexible Charge Models

Here, a shadow molecular dynamics scheme for flexible charge models is presented where the shadow Born–Oppenheimer potential is derived from a coarse-grained approximation of range-separated density functional theory. The interatomic potential, including the atomic electronegativities and the charge-independent short-range part of the potential and force terms, is modeled by the linear atomic cluster expansion (ACE), which provides a computationally efficient alternative to many machine learning methods. The shadow molecular dynamics scheme is based on extended Lagrangian (XL) Born–Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BOMD). XL-BOMD provides stable dynamics while avoiding the costly computational overhead associated with solving an all-to-all system of equations, which normally is required to determine the relaxed electronic ground state prior to each force evaluation. To demonstrate the proposed shadow molecular dynamics scheme for flexible charge models using atomic cluster expansion, we emulate the dynamics generated from self-consistent charge density functional tight-binding (SCC-DFTB) theory using a second-order charge equilibration (QEq) model. The charge-independent potentials and electronegativities of the QEq model are trained for a supercell of uranium oxide (UO 2 ) and a molecular system of liquid water. The combined ACE+XL-QEq molecular dynamics simulations are stable over a wide range of temperatures both for the oxide and for the molecular systems and provide a precise sampling of the Born–Oppenheimer potential energy surfaces. Accurate ground Coulomb energies are produced by the ACE-based electronegativity model during an NVE simulation of UO 2 , predicted to be within 1 meV of those from SCC-DFTB on average during comparable simulations.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

GPU-Accelerated Solution of the Bethe–Salpeter Equation for Large and Heterogeneous Systems

We present a massively parallel GPU-accelerated implementation of the Bethe–Salpeter equation (BSE) for the calculation of the vertical excitation energies (VEEs) and optical absorption spectra of condensed and molecular systems, starting from single-particle eigenvalues and eigenvectors obtained with density functional theory. The algorithms adopted here circumvent the slowly converging sums over empty and occupied states and the inversion of large dielectric matrices through a density matrix perturbation theory approach and a low-rank decomposition of the screened Coulomb interaction, respectively. Further computational savings are achieved by exploiting the nearsightedness of the density matrix of semiconductors and insulators to reduce the number of screened Coulomb integrals. We scale our calculations to thousands of GPUs with a hierarchical loop and data distribution strategy. The efficacy of our method is demonstrated by computing the VEEs of several spin defects in wide-band-gap materials, showing that supercells with up to 1000 atoms are necessary to obtain converged results. We discuss the validity of the common approximation that solves the BSE with truncated sums over empty and occupied states. In conclusion, we then apply our GW-BSE implementation to a diamond lattice with 1727 atoms to study the symmetry breaking of triplet states caused by the interaction of a point defect with an extended line defect.

Absorption spectra↗

A High-Efficiency Delayed Update Algorithm for Evaluating Slater Determinants in Quantum Monte Carlo

For quantum Monte Carlo simulations of molecular systems or supercells with thousands of electrons, matrix operations related to Slater determinants lead the computational cost. McDaniel et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 2017, 147, 174107] proposed a delayed update algorithm to increase computational efficiency by using matrix–matrix multiplication when updating the inverse matrices of Slater determinants. However, preparing intermediate matrices for applying the Sherman–Morrison–Woodbury formula remained a bottleneck. Here, in this work, we introduce an improved algorithm for CPUs and GPUs that (1) reduces this bottleneck by iteratively updating the intermediate matrices and (2) is efficient at any acceptance ratio, with no cost for rejected moves on CPUs and minimal cost on GPUs. We show the full scheme of integrating the delayed update algorithm into a single-electron move. The high efficiency of our algorithm is demonstrated on CPUs and GPUs for a 512 atom/6144 valence electron calculation, with 12× and 2× overall speed-up compared to traditional rank-1 update schemes in diffusion quantum Monte Carlo, respectively.

Luo, Ye [Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonn↗

Characterizing Defect Dynamics in Silicon Carbide Using Symmetry-Adapted Collective Variables and Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials

Silicon carbide (SiC) divacancies are attractive candidates for spin-defect qubits possessing long coherence times and optical addressability. The high activation barriers associated with SiC defect formation and motion pose challenges for their study by first-principles molecular dynamics. In this work, we develop and deploy machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs) to accelerate defect dynamics simulations while retaining ab initio accuracy. We employ an active learning strategy comprising symmetry-adapted collective variable discovery and enhanced sampling to compile configurationally diverse training data, calculation of energies and forces using density functional theory (DFT), and training of an E(3)-equivariant MLIP based on the Allegro model. Here, the trained MLIP reproduces DFT-level accuracy in defect transition activation free energy barriers, enables the efficient and stable simulation of multidefect 216-atom supercells, and permits an analysis of the temperature dependence of defect thermodynamic stability and formation/annihilation kinetics to propose an optimal annealing temperature to maximally stabilize VV divacancies.

Computer simulations↗

Atomistic Insight into Cation Effects on Binding Energies in Cu-Catalyzed Carbon Dioxide Reduction

Electrolyte properties in general and electrolyte ions in particular have been shown to have significant effects on the kinetics of electrochemical CO 2 and CO reduction at metal electrodes, but these effects have not yet been fully understood. Here, we investigate the effects of cations at the aqueous electrolyte–Cu(211) interface on adsorbate binding energies and the electrolyte structure using density functional theory (DFT). Charging the interface via explicit Na + has systematic effects on adsorbate–electrolyte interactions and conformations. We describe specific local adsorbate–ion interactions, including direct alkali ion–adsorbate coordination and hydrogen bonding via ion-coordinated water molecules. The relative importance of these specific interactions and purely electrostatic field–adsorbate interactions is investigated by comparing the DFT-calculated ion effects to those predicted by purely electrostatic models of the interface and the adsorbates. We find that the trend in ion effects among different adsorbates at constant surface charge density is well explained by a purely electrostatic interaction model. The binding energy of OCCHO is found to depend strongly on the surface charge density as well as the spatial distribution of ions at constant surface charge density. These effects are also explained by a purely electrostatic local electrostatic field–adsorbate model. This indicates that alkali ion effects can be mainly attributed to purely electrostatic field interactions and that the local field at ion-stabilized active sites can depend significantly on both the overall charge density and on the spatial distribution of ions at constant charge density. This work provides new insight on alkali ion effects on a variety of adsorbates relevant to the CO 2 and CO reduction reactions by describing specific local ion–adsorbate interactions, systematic changes in adsorbate–electrolyte interactions induced by explicit surface charge, and comparisons of the calculated effects on binding energies to simple electrostatic field–adsorbate models to explain trends among various adsorbates and at varying surface charge densities and supercell configurations.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Understanding Lithium Local Environments in LiMn 0.5 Ni 0.5 O 2 Cathodes: A DFT-Supported 6 Li Solid-State NMR Study

LiMn 0.5 Ni 0.5 O 2 has been plagued by the structural failure driven by the irreversible phase change upon subsequent cycling and the structural degradation caused by the seemingly unavoidable Li/Ni exchange. This begs for a better understanding of the correlation between lithium local structures, synthesis conditions, and overall electrochemical properties of materials. In this study, we use density functional theory (DFT) to assist experimental 6 Li solid-state magic angle spinning (MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to understand the nature and change in lithium local structures with extended annealing times (168 vs 15 h) synthesized at 900 °C. To correlate the NMR peak changes after different synthesis conditions, we calculated the NMR spectra of representative low-energy model configurations of LiMn 0.5 Ni 0.5 O 2 composition–zigzag, row, and flower structures–as well as the influence of Ni/Mn ordering and Li/Ni exchange on each spectrum using a supercell that is large enough to allow us to consider the effect of different relative configurations of adjacent transition metal (TM) layers. The analysis based on a combination of the calculated NMR and the experimental spectra suggests that most configurations contributing to the experimental spectra are in fact composed of a blend of configurations higher in energy than the classical well-ordered ground-state structures. Further, the extended annealing of LiMn 0.5 Ni 0.5 O 2 slightly enhances Ni/Mn and Li/Mn orderings while reducing the Li/Ni mixing ratio. This study shows how DFT calculations are crucial in providing a better understanding of the experimental characterization data and therefore local environments and domain structures in oxide materials, such as Li-ion battery cathodes.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Understanding the Mechanism of Secondary Cation Release from the (001) Surface of Li(Ni 1/3 Mn 1/3 Co 1/3 )O 2 : Insights from First-Principles

The transformations of complex metal oxides in aqueous settings must be studied to form a chemical understanding of how technologically relevant nanomaterials impact the environment upon disposal. Owing to the inherent heterogeneity and structural complexity of the ternary intercalation material Li(Ni x Mn y Co 1-x-y )O 2 (NMC), the mechanisms of chemical processes at the solid–water interfac e are challenging to model. Here, density functional theory (DFT) + solvent ion methodology is used to study the energetics of stepwise release of two surface metals following unique pathways. Further, the study spans different combinations of metal removal and also considers unique patterns of defects formed by modeling the NMC surface in supercells. The approach here also considers the equilibration of the surface with the surroundings between successive metal removals. A key finding is that a second metal removal prefers to proceed at a metal lattice site adjacent to the initial defect, and this is attributed in part to how the resulting slab with two metal vacancies maintains the most antiferromagnetic couplings between the remaining Ni/Mn.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Excited States of Crystalline Point Defects with Multireference Density Matrix Embedding Theory

Accurate and affordable methods to characterize the electronic structure of solids are important for targeted materials design. Embedding-based methods provide an appealing balance in the trade-off between cost and accuracy-particularly when studying localized phenomena. Here, we use the density matrix embedding theory (DMET) algorithm to study the electronic excitations in solid-state defects with a restricted open-shell Hartree-Fock (ROHF) bath and multireference impurity solvers, specifically, complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) and n-electron valence state second-order perturbation theory (NEVPT2). In this work, we apply the method to investigate the electronic excitations in an oxygen vacancy (OV) on a MgO(100) surface and find absolute deviations within 0.05 eV between DMET using the CASSCF/NEVPT2 solver, denoted as CAS-DMET/NEVPT2-DMET, and the nonembedded CASSCF/NEVPT2 approach. Next, we establish the practicality of DMET by extending it to larger supercells for the OV defect and a neutral silicon vacancy in diamond where the use of nonembedded CASSCF/NEVPT2 is extremely expensive.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Doping Limits of Phosphorus, Arsenic, and Antimony in CdTe

Low p-type doping is a limiting factor to increase CdTe thin-film solar-cell efficiency toward the theoretical Shockley-Queisser limit of 33%. Previous calculations predict relatively high ionization energies for group-V acceptors (P, As, and Sb) and they are plagued by self-compensation, forming AX-centers, severely limiting hole concentration. However, recent experiments on CdTe single crystals indicate a much more favorable scenario, where P, As, and Sb behave as shallow acceptors. Using hybrid functional calculations, we solve this puzzle by showing that the ionization energies significantly decrease with the supercell size. When including the effects of spin-orbit coupling and extrapolating the results to the dilute limit, we find these impurities behave as hydrogenic-like shallow acceptors, and AX-centers are unstable and do not limit ptype doping. We address the differences between our results and previous theoretical predictions and show that our ionization energies predict hole concentrations that agree with recent temperature-dependent Hall measurements.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Local Excitations of a Charged Nitrogen Vacancy in Diamond with Multireference Density Matrix Embedding Theory

Here, we investigate the negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond using periodic density matrix embedding theory (pDMET). To describe the strongly correlated excited states of this system, the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) followed by n-electron valence state second-order perturbation theory (NEVPT2) was used as the impurity solver. Since the NEVPT2-DMET energies show a linear dependence on the inverse of the size of the embedding subspace, we performed an extrapolation of the excitation energies to the nonembedding limit using a linear regression. The extrapolated NEVPT2-DMET first triplet–triplet excitation energy is 2.31 eV and that for the optically inactive singlet–singlet transition is 1.02 eV, both in agreement with the experimentally observed vertical excitation energies of ∼2.18 eV and ∼1.26 eV, respectively. This is the first application of pDMET to a charged periodic system and the first investigation of the NV – defect using NEVPT2 for periodic supercell models.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Degeneracy in Intercalated Pb Phases under Buffer-Layer Graphene on SiC(0001) and Diffuse Moiré Spots in Surface Diffraction

First-principles density functional theory (DFT) is used to analyze the stability of Pb intercalated phases under buffer layer graphene on SiC(0001) as a function of the supercell size, Pb coverage, and degree of Pb ordering. By comparing the chemical potentials of such two-dimensional Pb structures, here we find that there is a family of structurally distinct thermodynamically preferred Pb subsurface configurations with minute stability differences. These differences are comparable to the thermal energies at about 450 °C, where the Pb intercalated phases are grown. High-resolution surface-diffraction experiments using Spot Profile Analysis Low-Energy Electron Diffraction (SPA-LEED) confirm this high degree of degeneracy of the Pb intercalated phases from broad, low-intensity moiré spots observed exclusively from intercalated Pb. The low intensity of the moiré spots implies the coexistence of structurally different subsurface Pb phases.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Engineering Interlayer Electron–Phonon Coupling in WS 2 /BN Heterostructures

In van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures, the interlayer electron–phonon coupling (EPC) provides one unique channel to nonlocally engineer these elementary particles. However, limited by the stringent occurrence conditions, the efficient engineering of interlayer EPC remains elusive. Here we report a multitier engineering of interlayer EPC in WS2/boron nitride (BN) heterostructures, including isotope enrichments of BN substrates, temperature, and high-pressure tuning. The hyperfine isotope dependence of Raman intensities was unambiguously revealed. In combination with theoretical calculations, we anticipate that WS2/BN supercells could induce Brillouin-zone-folded phonons that contribute to the interlayer coupling, leading to a complex nature of broad Raman peaks. We further demonstrate the significance of a previously unexplored parameter, the interlayer spacing. By varying the temperature and high pressure, we effectively manipulated the strengths of EPC with on/off capabilities, indicating critical thresholds of the layer–layer spacing for activating and strengthening interlayer EPC. Our findings provide new opportunities to engineer vdW heterostructures with controlled interlayer coupling.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗

Effect of Framework Composition and NH 3 on the Diffusion of Cu + in Cu-CHA Catalysts Predicted by Machine-Learning Accelerated Molecular Dynamics

Cu-exchanged zeolites rely on mobile solvated Cu + cations for their catalytic activity, but the role of the framework composition in transport is not fully understood. Ab initio molecular dynamics simulations can provide quantitative atomistic insight but are too computationally expensive to explore large length and time scales or diverse compositions. We report a machine-learning interatomic potential that accurately reproduces ab initio results and effectively generalizes to allow multinanosecond simulations of large supercells and diverse chemical compositions. Biased and unbiased simulations of [Cu(NH 3 ) 2 ] + mobility show that aluminum pairing in eight-membered rings accelerates local hopping and demonstrate that increased NH 3 concentration enhances long-range diffusion. The probability of finding two [Cu(NH 3 ) 2 ] + complexes in the same cage, which is key for SCR-NOx reaction, increases with Cu content and Al content but does not correlate with the long-range mobility of Cu + . Supporting experimental evidence was obtained from reactivity tests of Cu-CHA catalysts with a controlled chemical composition.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Lattice Anisotropy-Driven Reduction of Phonon Velocities in Black Phosphorus

Phonon dynamics and transport determine how heat is utilized and dissipated in materials. In 2D systems for optoelectronics and thermoelectrics, the impact of nanoscale material structure on phonon propagation is central to controlling thermal conduction. Here, we directly observe in-plane coherent acoustic phonon propagation in black phosphorus (BP) using ultrafast electron microscopy. We identify a significant reduction of the group velocities in directions intermediate to the armchair and zigzag lattice directions. Using a machine learning-based model with an >8000 atom supercell, we find that this slowing results from the mixing of in-plane transverse and longitudinal acoustic phonons and is independent of broken symmetries of edge reconstructions. In conclusion, this work demonstrates how coherent phonon transport is sensitive to propagation direction in the lattice plane.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗