Jumras Limtrakul

Establishing the Accuracy of Broadly Used Density Functionals in Describing Bulk Properties of Transition Metals.

The performance of various commonly used density functionals is established by comparing calculated values of atomic structure data, cohesive energies, and bulk moduli of all transition metals to available experimental data. The functionals explored are the Ceperley-Alder (CA), Vosko-Wilk-Nussair (VWN) implementation of the Local Density Approximation (LDA); the Perdew-Wang (PW91) and Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) forms of the Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA), and the RPBE and PBEsol modifications of PBE, aimed at better describing adsorption energies and bulk solid lattice properties, respectively. The present systematic study shows that PW91 and PBE consistently provide the smallest differences between the calculated and experimental values. Additional calculations of the (111) surface energy of several face centered cubic (fcc) transition metals reveal that LDA produces the most accurate results, while all other functionals significantly underestimate the experimental values. RPBE severely underestimates surface energy, which may be the origin for the reduced surface chemical activity and the better performance of RPBE describing adsorption energies.

Adsorption of ethylene, benzene, and ethylbenzene over faujasite zeolites investigated by the ONIOM method

The performance of the ONIOM (Our-own-N-layered Integrated molecular Orbital + molecular Mechanics) approach utilizing 10 combinations of two-layer ONIOM2 schemes has been tested for various sizes of faujasite clusters containing up to 84T tetrahedral atoms and the complexes they form with ethylene, benzene, and ethylbenzene molecules. Interaction energies of the adsorbates with a 3T bare quantum cluster are calculated to be −8.14, −7.48, and −7.76 kcal/mol at B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level of theory, respectively. The long-range effects of the extended structure of zeolite were found to differentiate the stability of adsorption complexes that cannot be drawn from the typical 3T quantum cluster. The interaction energies of ethylene, benzene, and ethylbenzene molecules on the more realistic cluster, 84T, using ONIOM2(B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p):UFF) scheme are predicted to be −8.75, −15.17, and −21.08 kcal/mol, respectively, which compare well with the experimental estimates of −9.1, −15.3, and −19.6 kcal/mol, respectively. This finding clearly demonstrates that the interaction between adsorbate and acidic zeolites does not depend only on the Bronsted group center but also on the lattice framework surrounding the adsorption site. The results obtained in this study suggest that the ONIOM approach, when carefully calibrated, is a computationally efficient and accurate method for studying adsorption of aromatics on zeolites.

Bulk Properties of Transition Metals: A Challenge for the Design of Universal Density Functionals

Systematic evaluation of the accuracy of exchange-correlation functionals is essential to guide scientists in their choice of an optimal method for a given problem when using density functional theory. In this work, accuracy of one Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA) functional, three meta-GGA functionals, one Nonseparable Gradient Approximation (NGA) functional, one meta-NGA, and three hybrid GGA functionals was evaluated for calculations of the closest interatomic distances, cohesive energies, and bulk moduli of all 3d, 4d, and 5d bulk transition metals that have face centered cubic (fcc), hexagonal closed packed (hcp), or body centered cubic (bcc) structures (a total of 27 cases). Our results show that including the extra elements of kinetic energy density and Hartree-Fock exchange energy density into gradient approximation density functionals does not usually improve them. Nevertheless, the accuracies of the Tao-Perdew-Staroverov-Scuseria (TPSS) and M06-L meta-GGAs and the MN12-L meta-NGA approach the accuracy of the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) GGA, so usage of these functionals may be advisable for systems containing both solid-state transition metals and molecular species. The N12 NGA functional is also shown to be almost as accurate as PBE for bulk transition metals, and thus it could be a good choice for studies of catalysis given its proven good performance for molecular species.

Activity enhancement by acetic acid in cyclohexane oxidation using Ti-containing zeolite catalyst

Titanium silicalite (TS-1) was hydrothermally crystallised from a titanosilicate gel. The solid material was characterised by XRD, IR, and SEM, and then used as a catalyst in the liquid phase oxidation of cyclohexane with hydrogen peroxide. The reaction was carried out for 6 h, at the temperature between 40 and 80 °C. It was found that a marked increase in the catalytic activity was observed in the reaction using acetic acid as the solvent, as compared to those using no solvent and methyl ethyl ketone. Further investigation was made on the cause of activity enhancement, and it was shown that acetic acid was readily oxidised to peracetic acid. This compound was believed to facilitate the complexation of the framework titanium active sites, and subsequently serve as a better oxidising agent, as compared to the original hydrogen peroxide. However, leaching of the titanium species was also observed in small amounts, from the reaction using acetic acid as the solvent. In the mechanistic point of view, there was an evidence suggesting that cyclohexanol might be a primary product from the cyclohexane oxidation, and can be consecutively re-oxidised to form cyclohexanone. It is noted that the direct oxidation from cyclohexane to cyclohexanone cannot be excluded.

Enantioselective recognition at mesoporous chiral metal surfaces.

Chirality is widespread in natural systems, and artificial reproduction of chiral recognition is a major scientific challenge, especially owing to various potential applications ranging from catalysis to sensing and separation science. In this context, molecular imprinting is a well-known approach for generating materials with enantioselective properties, and it has been successfully employed using polymers. However, it is particularly difficult to synthesize chiral metal matrices by this method. Here we report the fabrication of a chirally imprinted mesoporous metal, obtained by the electrochemical reduction of platinum salts in the presence of a liquid crystal phase and chiral template molecules. The porous platinum retains a chiral character after removal of the template molecules. A matrix obtained in this way exhibits a large active surface area due to its mesoporosity, and also shows a significant discrimination between two enantiomers, when they are probed using such materials as electrodes.

Gas sensing properties of platinum derivatives of single-walled carbon nanotubes: A DFT analysis.

The limitations of intrinsic carbon nanotube (CNT) based devices to examine toxic gases motivate us to investigate novel sensors which can possibly overcome sensitivity problems. Pt-CNT assemblies (with Pt deposited externally as well as internally Pt-doped ones) interacting with NO(2) and NH(3) are studied and compared with unmodified CNTs. DFT calculations show that Pt can enhance adsorption and charge transfer processes to a very large degree. Incoming gas molecules cause changes in the electronic structure and charge distribution of the Pt-substituted CNTs that are both larger and more far-reaching than in their unmodified counterparts. Their relatively high stability is unaffected by the complexation with NO(2) and NH(3). CNTs with defective surface were also investigated. The sensing performance of Pt-doped CNT is found to be superior to defected CNTs.

Dissociative electron attachment to acetic acid (CH3COOH)

Abstract Dissociative electron attachment (DEA) to acetic acid in the energy range between about 0 and 13 eV generates as much as nine different fragment ions. The dominant products are CH3COO− and CH2O2− which appear from two closely spaced low energy resonances peaking at 0.75 and 1.5 eV. In view of our ab initio calculation we assign these states as single particle shape resonances associated with the first and second virtual MO, respectively. The electronic and geometrical structure of CH2O2− remains under question, the thermodynamics of the associated DEA reaction, however, predict an exceptionally high stability of this anion.

Partial cross sections for positive and negative ion formation following electron impact on uracil

We report absolute partial cross sections for the formation of selected positive and negative ions resulting from electron interactions with uracil. Absolute calibration of the measured partial cross sections for the formation of the three most intense positive ions, the parent C4H4N2O+2 ion and the C3H3NO+ and OCN+ fragment ions, was achieved by normalization of the total single uracil ionization cross section (obtained as the sum of all measured partial single ionization cross sections) to a calculated cross section based on the semi-classical Deutsch–Mark formalism at 100 eV. Subsequently, we used the OCN+ cross section in conjunction with the known sensitivity ratio for positive and negative ion detection in our apparatus (obtained from the well-known cross sections for SF+4 and SF−4 formation from SF6) to determine the dissociative attachment cross section for OCN− formation from uracil. This cross section was found to be roughly an order of magnitude smaller, about 5 × 10−22 m2 at 6.5 eV, compared to our previously reported preliminary value. We attribute this discrepancy to the difficult determination of the uracil target density in the earlier work. Using a reliably calculated cross section for normalization purposes avoids this complication.

Structure and dynamics of water confined in single-wall nanotubes.

The structure and dynamics of water confined in model single-wall carbon- and boron-nitride nanotubes (called SWCNT and SWBNNT, respectively) of different diameters have been investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations at room temperature. The simulations were performed on periodically extended nanotubes filled with an amount of water that was determined by soaking a section of the nanotube in a water box in an NpT simulation (1 atm, 298 K). All MD production simulations were performed in the canonical (NVT) ensemble at a temperature of 298 K. Water was described by the extended simple point charge (SPC/E) model. The wall-water interactions were varied, within reasonable limits, to study the effect of a modified hydrophobicity of the pore walls. We report distribution functions for the water in the tubes in spherical and cylindrical coordinates and then look at the single-molecule dynamics, in particular self-diffusion. While this motion is slowed down in narrow tubes, in keeping with previous findings (Liu et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2005, 123, 234701-234707; Liu and Wang. Phys. Rev. 2005, 72, 085420/1-085420/4; Liu et al. Langmuir 2005, 21, 12025-12030) bulk-water like self-diffusion coefficients are found in wider tubes, more or less independently of the wall-water interaction. There may, however, be an anomaly in the self-diffusion for the SWBNNT.

Theoretical assessment of graphene-metal contacts

Graphene-metal contacts have emerged as systems of paramount importance in the synthesis of high-quality and large-size patches of graphene and as vital components of nanotechnological devices. Herein, we study the accuracy of several density functional theory methods using van der Waals functionals or dispersive forces corrections when describing the attachment of graphene on Ni(111). Two different experimentally observed chemisorption states, top-fcc and bridge-top, were put under examination, together with the hcp-fcc physisorption state. Calculated geometric, energetic, and electronic properties were compared to experimental data. From the calculations, one finds that (i) predictions made by different methodologies differ significantly and (ii) optB86b-vdW functional and Grimme dispersion correction seem to provide the best balanced description of stability of physisorption and chemisorption states, the attachment strength of the latter on Ni(111) surface, the graphene-Ni(111) separation, and the bandstructure of chemisorbed graphene. The collation suggests that accurate and affordable theoretical studies on technologies based on graphene-metal contacts are already at hand.