De-Li Chen

Atomic charges derived from electrostatic potentials for molecular and periodic systems.

We present a method for fitting atomic charges to the electrostatic potential (ESP) of periodic and nonperiodic systems. This method is similar to the method of Campa et al. [ J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2009, 5, 2866]. We compare the Wolf and Ewald long-range electrostatic summation methods in calculating the ESP for periodic systems. We find that the Wolf summation is computationally more efficient than the Ewald summation by about a factor of 5 with comparable accuracy. Our analysis shows that the choice of grid mesh size influences the fitted atomic charges, especially for systems with buried (highly coordinated) atoms. We find that a maximum grid spacing of 0.2−0.3 A is required to obtain reliable atomic charges. The effect of the exclusion radius for point selection is assessed; we find that the common choice of using the van der Waals (vdW) radius as the exclusion radius for each atom may result in large deviations between the ESP generated from the ab initio calculations and that computed from the fitted charges, especially for points closest to the exclusion radii. We find that a larger value of exclusion radius than commonly used, 1.3 times the vdW radius, provides more reliable results. We find that a penalty function approach for fitting charges for buried atoms, with the target charge taken from Bader charge analysis, gives physically reasonable results.

The role of van der Waals interactions in the adsorption of noble gases on metal surfaces

Adsorption of noble gases on metal surfaces is determined by weak interactions. We applied two versions of the nonlocal van der Waals density functional (vdW-DF) to compute adsorption energies of Ar, Kr, and Xe on Pt(111), Pd(111), Cu(111), and Cu(110) metal surfaces. We compared our results with data obtained using other density functional approaches, including the semiempirical vdW-corrected DFT-D2. The vdW-DF results show considerable improvements in the description of adsorption energies and equilibrium distances over other DFT based methods, giving good agreement with experiments. We also calculated perpendicular vibrational energies for noble gases on the metal surfaces using vdW-DF data and found excellent agreement with available experimental results. Our vdW-DF calculations show that adsorption of noble gases on low-coordination sites is energetically favored over high-coordination sites, but only by a few meV. Analysis of the two-dimensional potential energy surface shows that the high-coordination sites are local maxima on the two-dimensional potential energy surface and therefore unlikely to be observed in experiments; this provides an explanation of the experimental observations. The DFT-D2 approach with the standard parameterization was found to overestimate the dispersion interactions, and to give the wrong adsorption site preference for four of the nine systems we studied.

Experimental and theoretical comparison of gas desorption energies on metallic and semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes.

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) exhibit high surface areas and precisely defined pores, making them potentially useful materials for gas adsorption and purification. A thorough understanding of the interactions between adsorbates and SWNTs is therefore critical to predicting adsorption isotherms and selectivities. Metallic (M-) and semiconducting (S-) SWNTs have extremely different polarizabilities that might be expected to significantly affect the adsorption energies of molecules. We experimentally and theoretically show that this expectation is contradicted, for both a long chain molecule (n-heptane) and atoms (Ar, Kr, and Xe). Temperature-programmed desorption experiments are combined with van der Waals corrected density functional theory, examining adsorption on interior and exterior sites of the SWNTs. Our calculations show a clear dependence of the adsorption energy on nanotube diameter but not on whether the tubes are conducting or insulating. We find no significant experimental or theoretical difference in adsorption energies for molecules adsorbed on M- and S-SWNTs having the same diameter. Hence, we conclude that the differences in polarizabilities between M- and S-SWNTs have a negligible influence on gas adsorption for spherical molecules as well as for highly anisotropic molecules such as n-heptane. We expect this conclusion to apply to all types of adsorbed molecules where van der Waals interactions govern the molecular interaction with the SWNT.

Adsorption and Diffusion of Fluids in Defective Carbon Nanotubes: Insights from Molecular Simulations

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have been shown from both simulations and experiments to have remarkably low resistance to gas and liquid transport. This has been attributed to the remarkably smooth interior surface of pristine SWNTs. However, real SWNTs are known to have various defects that depend on the synthesis method and procedure used to activate the SWNTs. In this paper, we study adsorption and transport properties of atomic and molecular fluids in SWNTs having vacancy point defects. We construct models of defective nanotubes that have either unrelaxed defects, where the overall structure of the SWNT is not changed, or reconstructed defects, where the bonding topology and therefore the shape of the SWNT is allowed to change. Furthermore, we include partial atomic charges on the SWNT carbon atoms due to the reconstructed defects. We consider adsorption and diffusion of Ar atoms and CO2 and H2O molecules as examples of a noble gas, a linear quadrupolar fluid, and a polar fluid. Adsorption isotherms were found to be fairly insensitive to the defects, even for the case of water in the charged, reconstructed SWNT. We have computed both the self-diffusivities and corrected diffusivities (which are directly related to the transport diffusivities) for each of these fluids. In general, we found that at zero loading that defects can dramatically reduce the self- and corrected diffusivities. However, at high, liquidlike loadings, the self-diffusion coefficients for pristine and defective nanotubes are very similar, indicating that fluid-fluid collisions dominate the dynamics over the fluid-SWNT collisions. In contrast, the corrected diffusion coefficients can be more than an order of magnitude lower for water in defective SWNTs. This dramatic decrease in the transport diffusion is due to the formation of an ordered structure of water, which forms around a local defect site. It is therefore important to properly characterize the level and types of defects when accurate transport diffusivities are needed.