Masoud Aryanpour

ATR-FTIR and density functional theory study of the structures, energetics, and vibrational spectra of phosphate adsorbed onto goethite.

Periodic plane-wave density functional theory (DFT) and molecular cluster hybrid molecular orbital-DFT (MO-DFT) calculations were performed on models of phosphate surface complexes on the (100), (010), (001), (101), and (210) surfaces of α-FeOOH (goethite). Binding energies of monodentate and bidentate HPO(4)(2-) surface complexes were compared to H(2)PO(4)(-) outer-sphere complexes. Both the average potential energies from DFT molecular dynamics (DFT-MD) simulations and energy minimizations were used to estimate adsorption energies for each configuration. Molecular clusters were extracted from the energy-minimized structures of the periodic systems and subjected to energy reminimization and frequency analysis with MO-DFT. The modeled P-O and P---Fe distances were consistent with EXAFS data for the arsenate oxyanion that is an analog of phosphate, and the interatomic distances predicted by the clusters were similar to those of the periodic models. Calculated vibrational frequencies from these clusters were then correlated with observed infrared bands. Configurations that resulted in favorable adsorption energies were also found to produce theoretical vibrational frequencies that correlated well with experiment. The relative stability of monodentate versus bidentate configurations was a function of the goethite surface under consideration. Overall, our results show that phosphate adsorption onto goethite occurs as a variety of surface complexes depending on the habit of the mineral (i.e., surfaces present) and solution pH. Previous IR spectroscopic studies may have been difficult to interpret because the observed spectra averaged the structural properties of three or more configurations on any given sample with multiple surfaces.

Convergent Iterative Constrained Variation Algorithm for Calculation of Electron-Transfer Transition States

Electron transfer ET reactions in solutions or at heterogeneous interfaces and electrodes constitute the core of chemical processes in many applications ranging from electrochemical power generation, such as fuel cells, to biological systems. Knowledge of the electrochemical steps in these processes plays a vital role in the analysis of reaction mechanisms and in understanding the chemistry involved. While quantum computations have been extensively used to investigate many non-ET reactions in the reduction steps of oxygen in fuel cells,

An algorithm for mass matrix calculation of internally constrained molecular geometries

Dynamic models for molecular systems require the determination of corresponding mass matrix. For constrained geometries, these computations are often not trivial but need special considerations. Here, assembling the mass matrix of internally constrained molecular structures is formulated as an optimization problem. Analytical expressions are derived for the solution of the different possible cases depending on the rank of the constraint matrix. Geometrical interpretations are further used to enhance the solution concept. As an application, we evaluate the mass matrix for a constrained molecule undergoing an electron-transfer reaction. The preexponential factor for this reaction is computed based on the harmonic model.