Chenyu Zou

Peel-and-Stick: Mechanism Study for Efficient Fabrication of Flexible/Transparent Thin-film Electronics

Peel-and-stick process, or water-assisted transfer printing (WTP), represents an emerging process for transferring fully fabricated thin-film electronic devices with high yield and fidelity from a SiO2/Si wafer to various non-Si based substrates, including papers, plastics and polymers. This study illustrates that the fundamental working principle of the peel-and-stick process is based on the water-assisted subcritical debonding, for which water reduces the critical adhesion energy of metal-SiO2 interface by 70 ~ 80%, leading to clean and high quality transfer of thin-film electronic devices. Water-assisted subcritical debonding is applicable for a range of metal-SiO2 interfaces, enabling the peel-and-stick process as a general and tunable method for fabricating flexible/transparent thin-film electronic devices.

First-principles studies on vacancy-modified interstitial diffusion mechanism of oxygen in nickel, associated with large-scale atomic simulation techniques

This paper is concerned with the prediction of oxygen diffusivities in fcc nickel from first-principles calculations and large-scale atomic simulations. Considering only the interstitial octahedral to tetrahedral to octahedral minimum energy pathway for oxygen diffusion in fcc lattice, greatly underestimates the migration barrier and overestimates the diffusivities by several orders of magnitude. The results indicate that vacancies in the Ni-lattice significantly impact the migration barrier of oxygen in nickel. Incorporation of the effect of vacancies results in predicted diffusivities consistent with available experimental data. First-principles calculations show that at high temperatures the vacancy concentration is comparable to the oxygen solubility, and there is a strong binding energy and a redistribution of charge density between the oxygen atom and vacancy. Consequently, there is a strong attraction between the oxygen and vacancy in the Ni lattice, which impacts diffusion.

Development and Validation of a ReaxFF Reactive Force Field for Fe/Al/Ni Alloys: Molecular Dynamics Study of Elastic Constants, Diffusion, and Segregation

We have developed a ReaxFF force field for Fe/Al/Ni binary alloys based on quantum mechanical (QM) calculations. In addition to the various bulk phases of the binary alloys, the (100), (110) and (111) surface energies and adatom binding energies were included in the training set for the force field parametrization of the Fe/Al/Ni binary alloys. To validate these optimized force fields, we studied (i) elastic constants of the binary alloys at finite temperatures, (ii) diffusivity of alloy components in Al/Ni alloy, and (iii) segregation on the binary alloy surfaces. First, we calculated linear elastic constants of FeAl, FeNi(3), and Ni(3)Al in the temperature range 300 to 1100 K. The temperature dependences of the elastic constants of these three alloys, showing a decrease in C(11), C(12), and C(44) as temperature increases, were in good agreement with the experimental results. We also performed ReaxFF molecular dynamics (MD) simulations for Al or Ni diffusion in the system modeled as Al/Ni mixed layers with the linear composition gradients. At 1000 K, Al diffusivity at the pure Al end was 2 orders of magnitude larger than that in the Al trace layers, probably explaining the nature of different diffusion behavior between molten metals and alloys. However, the diffusivity of Ni at the pure Ni end was only slightly larger than that in the Ni trace layers at the system temperature much lower than the melting temperature of Ni. Third, we investigated the surface segregation in L1(2)-Fe(3)Al, Fe(3)Ni, and Ni(3)Al clusters at high temperature (2500 K). From the analysis of composition distribution of the alloy components from the bulk to the surface layer, it was found that the degree of segregation depended on the chemical composition of the alloy. Al surface segregation occurred most strongly in Fe(3)Al, whereas it occurred most weakly in Ni(3)Al. These results may support the segregation mechanism that surface segregation results from the interplay between the energetic stability of the ordered bulk phase and the surface reconstruction. In addition, the surface segregation induced the depletion layers of segregating metal species (Al in Fe(3)Al and Ni(3)Al, and Ni in Fe(3)Ni) next to the segregation layers. These simulation results qualitatively agreed with early experimental observations of segregation in Fe/Al/Ni binary alloys.

Theoretical Investigation of Hydrogen Adsorption and Dissociation on Iron and Iron Carbide Surfaces Using the ReaxFF Reactive Force Field Method

We have developed a ReaxFF reactive force field to describe hydrogen adsorption and dissociation on iron and iron carbide surfaces relevant for simulation of Fischer–Tropsch (FT) synthesis on iron catalysts. This force field enables large system (>>1000 atoms) simulations of hydrogen related reactions with iron. The ReaxFF force field parameters are trained against a substantial amount of structural and energetic data including the equations of state and heats of formation of iron and iron carbide related materials, as well as hydrogen interaction with iron surfaces and different phases of bulk iron. We have validated the accuracy and applicability of ReaxFF force field by carrying out molecular dynamics simulations of hydrogen adsorption, dissociation and recombination on iron and iron carbide surfaces. The barriers and reaction energies for molecular dissociation on these two types of surfaces have been compared and the effect of subsurface carbon on hydrogen interaction with iron surface is evaluated. We found that existence of carbon atoms at subsurface iron sites tends to increase the hydrogen dissociation energy barrier on the surface, and also makes the corresponding hydrogen dissociative state relatively more stable compared to that on bare iron. These properties of iron carbide will affect the dissociation rate of H2 and will retain more surface hydride species, thus influencing the dynamics of the FT synthesis process.

Large-scale reactive molecular dynamics simulation and kinetic modeling of high-temperature pyrolysis of the Gloeocapsomorphaprisca microfossils.

The ability to predict accurately the thermal conversion of complex carbonaceous materials is of value in both petroleum exploration and refining operations. Modeling the thermal cracking of kerogen under basinal heating conditions improves the predrill prediction of oil and gas yields and quality, thereby ultimately lowering the exploration risk. Modeling the chemical structure and reactivity of asphaltene from petroleum vacuum residues enables prediction of coke formation and properties in refinery processes, thereby lowering operating cost. The chemical structure-chemical yield modeling (CS-CYM) developed by Freund et al. is more rigorous, time-consuming, and requires a great deal of chemical insight into reaction network and reaction kinetics. The present work explores the applicability of a more fundamental atomistic simulation using the quantum mechanically based reactive force field to predict the product yield and overall kinetics of decomposition of two biopolymers, namely, the Kukersite and Gutternberg. Reactive molecular dynamics (RMD) simulations were performed on systems consisting of 10(4) to 10(5) atoms at different densities and temperatures to derive the overall kinetic parameters and a lumped kinetic model for pyrolysis. The kinetic parameters derived from the simulated pyrolysis of an individual component and the mixture of all four components in Guttenberg reveal the role of cross-talk between the fragments and enhanced reactivity of component A by radicals from other components. The Arrhenius extrapolation of the model yields reasonable prediction for the overall barrier for cracking. Because simulations were run at very high temperature (T > 1500 K) to study cracking within the simulation time of up to 1 ns, it, however, led to the entropically favored ethylene formation as a dominant decomposition route. Future work will focus on evaluating the applicability of accelerated reactive MD approaches to study cracking.

A ReaxFF Reactive Force-field for Proton Transfer Reactions in Bulk Water and its Applications to Heterogeneous Catalysis

We have developed a ReaxFF reactive force-field description for bulk water and for proton transfer in the aqueous phase. This ReaxFF potential was parameterized exclusively against quantumchemical (QM) data, describing a broad range of intra- and intermolecular water interactions, including H–H, HO–OH and O=O bond dissociation energies, charge distributions, angle bending energies, binding energies for [H_2O]2–35-clusters, H-transfer reactions pathways in H_3O^+/H_2O, [H_2O]n and HO−/H_2O-clusters and ice densities and cohesive energies. We find good agreement between ReaxFF and QM for all these cases. We found that this QM-based ReaxFF potential gives a good description of bulk water phases and proton migration, reproducing experimental density, radial distribution and diffusion data, while it overestimates proton diffusion in the OH−/water system. We anticipate that this ReaxFF water description, in combination with ongoing ReaxFF-work on amines, carboxylic acids, phosphates and inorganic materials, should be highly suitable for simulating biochemical reactions involving enzymes and DNA. Furthermore, this potential can be used to simulate water reactions and proton diffusion on metal and metal oxide surfaces, opening up applications to catalysis, crystal growth and crack propagation studies. We have provided a specific example of this force field to heterogeneous catalysis, showing an oxygen/hydrogen recombination reaction in an iron nanoparticle.