Haibo Ma

Simultaneous Noncovalent Modification and Exfoliation of 2D Carbon Nitride for Enhanced Electrochemiluminescent Biosensing

As an emerging nitrogen-rich 2D carbon material, graphitic carbon nitride (CN) has drawn much attention for applications ranging from photo-/electrocatalysts to biosensors. Interfacial modification of CN is fundamentally vital but is still in its infancy and remains challenging due to the low reactivity of CN. Here we report that, in conjunction with a π-π stacking interaction, bulk CN could be simultaneously exfoliated via facile mechanical grinding. The obtained CN nanosheets (m-CNNS) not only retained the pristine optoelectronic properties of bulk CN but also enriched a friendly interface for further coupling biomolecules with advanced properties, overcoming the deficiencies of CN in surface science. The m-CNNS were further covalently linked to a DNA probe, and the resultant electrochemiluminescent biosensor for the target DNA exhibited much enhanced sensitivity with respect to that obtained by direct physical absorption of the DNA probe on unmodified CNNS. This noncovalent exfoliation and interfacial modification should greatly expand the scope of potential applications of CN in areas such as biosensing and should also be applicable to other 2D materials in interface modulation.

Direct Optical Generation of Long-Range Charge-Transfer States in Organic Photovoltaics

Direct optical excitation of long-range charge-transfer (CT) states in organic photovoltaics is shown to be feasible, a fact that is ascribed to the very low but non-vanishing oscillator strength of each individual transition and the much higher density of states (DOS) as compared with their short-range counterparts. This finding provides a new framework to interpret the low-energy absorption spectra of photovoltaic devices and to correlate this property with the optoelectronic conversion process in working devices.

Trends in the electronic and geometric structure of non-fullerene based acceptors for organic solar cells

We constructed a database of 80 high performing non-fullerene electron acceptors and studied the common electronic and geometric properties in search of unifying design rules. We discovered that, without exception, all high performing materials are characterized by very low gap between LUMO and LUMO+1 orbitals, a feature that is consistent with microscopic models and seems to be true for all classes of compounds considered. We also confirmed that non-planarity of the acceptor is beneficial but not for all classes of acceptors. We suggested that by building similar databases and keeping it up to date it will be possible to identify statistically meaningful structure–property relations.

Density dependence of hydrogen bonding and the translational-orientational structural order in supercritical water: A molecular dynamics study

Molecular dynamics simulation have been performed with a wide range of densities along a near critical isotherm of supercritical water (SCW) in order to study the density dependence of the structure order and hydrogen bonding (HB). It is revealed that the translational structure order is nearly invariant while the orientational tetrahedral structure order is very sensitive to the bulk density under supercritical conditions. Meanwhile, some energetically unfavorable intermediate water dimer structures are found to appear under supercritical conditions due to the reduced energy difference and the enhanced energy fluctuation. As a consequence, a general geometrical criterion or the inclusion of a energy-based criterion instead of currently widely adopted pure r(OH)-based geometric criterion is suggested to be used in the HB statistics under supercritical conditions. It is found that the average HB number per H(2)O molecule (n(HB)) reduces with the decreasing SCW bulk density although a given pair of H(2)O molecules are shown to have a stronger ability to form a hydrogen bond under lower SCW bulk densities. Accordingly, the orientational tetrahedral structure order q decreases with the reducing bulk density under supercritical conditions. However, when the fluid is dilute with ρ ≤ 0.19ρ(c) (ρ(c) = 0.322 g/cm(3)), the energy fluctuation increases sharply and the short-range order is destroyed, signifying the supercritical fluid (SCF)-gas state transition. Accordingly, the orientational tetrahedral structure order q gets reversal around ρ = 0.19ρ(c) and approaches zero under very dilute conditions. The sensitivity of the orientational order to the density implies the microscopic origin of the significant dependence of SCFs physicochemical properties on the pressure.

Implementation of renormalized excitonic method at ab initio level.

The renormalized excitonic method [Hajj et al., Phys Rev B 2005, 72, 224412], in which the excited state of the whole system may be described as a linear combination of local excitations, has been implemented at ab initio level. Its performance is tested on the ionization potential and the energy gap between singlet ground state and lowest triplet for linear molecular hydrogen chains and more realistic systems, such as polyenes and polysilenes, using full configuration interaction (FCI) wave functions with a minimal basis set. The influence of different block sizes and the extent of interblock interactions are investigated. It has been demonstrated that satisfactory results can be obtained if the near degeneracies between the model space and the outer space are avoided and if interactions between the next‐nearest neighbor blocks are considered. The method can be used with larger basis sets and other accurate enough ab initio evaluations (instead of FCI) of local excited states, from blocks, or from dimers or trimers of blocks. It provides a new possibility to accurately and economically describe the low‐lying delocalized excited states of large systems, even inhomogeneous ones.

Dynamical simulations of polaron transport in conjugated polymers with the inclusion of electron-electron interactions.

Dynamical simulations of polaron transport in conjugated polymers in the presence of an external time-dependent electric field have been performed within a combined extended Hubbard model (EHM) and Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model. Nearly all relevant electron-phonon and electron-electron interactions are fully taken into account by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for the pi electrons and the Newtons equation of motion for the backbone monomer displacements by virtue of the combination of the adaptive time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (TDDMRG) and classical molecular dynamics (MD). We find that after a smooth turn-on of the external electric field, the polaron is accelerated at first and then moves with a nearly constant velocity as one entity consisting of both the charge and the lattice deformation. An ohmic region (3 < or = E0 < or = 9 mV/A) where the stationary velocity increases linearly with the electric field strength is observed for the case of U = 2.0 eV and V = 1.0 eV. The maximal velocity is well above the speed of sound. Below 3 mV/A, the polaron velocity increases nonlinearly, and in high electric fields with strengths of E0 > or = 10.0 mV/A, the polaron will become unstable and dissociate. The relationship between electron-electron interaction strengths and polaron transport is also studied in detail. We find that the on-site Coulomb interactions U will suppress the polaron transport, and small nearest-neighbor interactions V values are also not beneficial to the polaronic motion while large V values favor the polaron transport.

Solvatochromic shifts of polar and non-polar molecules in ambient and supercritical water: A sequential quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics study including solute-solvent electron exchange-correlation

Polar and non-polar solutes (acetone and benzene) dissolved in ambient water and supercritical water are investigated theoretically using a sequential quantum mechanics (QM)/molecular mechanics (MM) method which combines classical molecular dynamics simulations and QM/MM calculations. From the detailed analysis of the dependence of the QM region size and point charge background region size as well as the different functionals, it is found that the inclusion of the solvent molecules within the first solvation shell into the QM region to account for the exchange-correlation between a solute and neighboring solvent molecules is important for the highly accurate spectral shift calculations, especially vital for the non-polar solutes whose interactions with the solvents are dominated by the quantum dispersions. At the same time, sufficiently large surrounding partial charge region (r(cutoff) ≥15 Å) as well as the functional corrections to describe the long-range dispersion-corrections are also essential for the study of the electronic excited states in condensed phase. Our calculated solvatochromic shift values and their density dependencies at ambient and high temperature conditions are found to be in good agreements with experimental observations. This indicates that sound theoretical studies of solvatochromic shift can be achieved provided that a reasonable computational scheme with sufficiently large N(water) (QM) and r(cutoff) values is implemented. We also find both of aqueous acetone and aqueous benzene under high temperatures present three distinctive regions: low-density gas-like region, supercritical region, and high-density liquid-like region. The plateau behavior of solvatochromic shift in the supercritical region can be ascribed to the solvent clustering around the solute, which is a fundamental phenomenon of supercritical fluids (SCFs). The density dependence of our calculated coordination number of the first solvation shell nicely reproduces the trend of spectral shift and verifies the solvent clustering phenomenon of SCFs and its relationship with SCFs physicochemical properties.

“Triplet-excited region” in polyene oligomers revisited: Pariser–Parr–Pople model studied with the density matrix renormalization group method

We have carried out density matrix renormalization group calculations on the T1 state of linear polyenes applying the Pariser-Parr-Pople (PPP) Model. The geometry optimization for the polyene oligomers C(2n)H(2n+2) (n = 4,5,6,...,15) shows that the S0 to T1 excitation region is composed of a soliton-antisoliton pair located symmetrically away from the center of the chain and leads to single- and double-bond interconversions in between. The distance between the soliton and antisoliton centers in T1 state changes with the length of the chain, contradictory to earlier conclusions obtained with PPP-SDCI or ab initio SCI methods. The inconsistency most possibly comes from the insufficient consideration of the electron correlations in small-scale CI methods.

Static polarizability and second hyperpolarizability of closed- and open-shell π-conjugated polymers

The static longitudinal linear polarizability (alpha) and second order hyperpolarizability (gamma) for neutral and charged, closed- and open-shell trans-polyacetylene (PA) chains C(2n)H(2n+2), C(2n-1)H(2n+1), C(2n-1)H(2n+1) (+), C(2n)H(2n+2) (+), and C(2n)H(2n+2) (2+) are systematically investigated and compared. The polarizabilities are calculated within the Pariser-Parr-Pople model, and the electron correlation effect is included through density matrix renormalization group. It turns out that for both alpha, and gamma, two neutral PA chains C(2n)H(2n+2) and C(2n-1)H(2n+1) give similar values, while both singly charged and doubly charged systems present significantly larger magnitude of alpha and gamma values than the two neutral chains. The two singly charged PA chains C(2n-1)H(2n+1) (+) and C(2n)H(2n+2) (+) give more apparent nonlinear optical responses than doubly charged case C(2n)H(2n+2) (2+) and both present negative second order hyperpolarizabilities for short to medium sized oligomers. The sign inversion of gamma values in singly charged PA molecules is anticipated to take place at the much longer length than ever observed due to the significant effects of electron correlation and geometry.

Spin distribution in neutral polyene radicals: Pariser-Parr-Pople model studied with the density matrix renormalization group method.

The geometries and pi electron spin distributions induced by neutral soliton defects in trans-polyacetylene radicals (from C(7)H(9) to C(49)H(51)) are studied using Pariser-Parr-Pople (PPP) model, solved by the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method. Comparisons with other quantum chemical methods as well as the experimental observations on heptatrienyl (C(7)H(9)) and nonatetraenyl (C(9)H(11)) radical species show that the semiempirical PPP method is in the list of the very few theories that can give correct description of the spin distributions for such extended pi-conjugated systems. By virtue of DMRGs power in dealing with large one-dimensional systems, we predicted that the half-width of a neutral spin soliton in polyacetylene is about 14 atoms, and the spin distributions in the center of the soliton is calculated as rho(0)=0.25, rho(1)=-0.12 with rho(1)rho(0)=-0.48, rho(-)rho(+)=-0.52, which agree well with the results from electron-nuclear double resonance experiments.