- Ruhr-Universität Bochum

The determination of catalyst nanostructures with first-principles accuracy using genetic algorithms (GA) is very demanding due to the cubic scaling of the computational cost of density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Here, we demonstrate, for the case of Ziegler-Natta MgCl2/TiCl4nanoplates, how this structure determination can be accelerated by employing a high-dimensional neural network potential (HDNNP) of essentially DFT accuracy. First, when building HDNNPs for MgCl2/TiCl4clusters with computationally tractable sizes, we found that the structural diversity in the training set is crucial for obtaining HDNNPs reliably describing the large variety of structures generated by GA. The resulting HDNNPs dramatically accelerated the structure determination while yielding results consistent with DFT. Subsequently, we developed a multistep adaptive procedure to construct a HDNNP for MgCl2/TiCl4clusters consistent in size and TiCl4coverage with experiments where prior DFT results were scarcely collected. The structure determination and analyses underline the importance of system size and composition in order to predict some experimentally known facts such as the surface morphology and population of isospecific sites. © 2023 American Chemical Society.

Machine learning potentials (MLP) enable atomistic simulations with first-principles accuracy at a small fraction of the costs of electronic structure calculations. Most modern MLPs rely on constructing the potential energy, or a major part of it, as a sum of atomic energies, which are given as a function of the local chemical environments up to a cutoff radius. Since analytic forces are readily available, nowadays it is common practice to make use of both, reference energies and forces, for training these MLPs. This can be computationally demanding since often large systems are required to obtain structurally converged reference forces experienced by atoms in realistic condensed phase environments. In this work we show how density-functional theory calculations of molecular fragments, which are too small to provide such structurally converged forces, can be used to learn forces exhibiting excellent transferability to extended systems. The general procedure and the accuracy of the method are illustrated for metal-organic frameworks using second-generation high-dimensional neural network potentials. © 2023 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Europium sulfide (EuS) thin films are appealing as ferromagnetic semiconductors and luminescent and optomagnetic materials owing to their unique functional properties. With the emerging field of spintronics and magneto-optical devices, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) offers a versatile platform to tune the material properties and the method to fabricate device structures needed for such applications. Herein, we report the growth of high-quality cubic EuS via a versatile CVD process where the new Eu(III) precursors employed facilitate the formation of the target EuS layers under moderated process conditions. Based on the prior evaluation of the physicochemical properties of these precursors using thermal analysis and density functional theory studies, adequate volatility, thermal stability, and sufficient reactivity toward potential co-reactants, namely, elemental sulfur, could be inferred. Thus, the use of toxic hydrogen sulfide generally needed for sulfide film depositions could be avoided, which is a significant advantage in terms of simplifying the deposition process. The as-deposited thin films were analyzed in terms of the structure, composition, and morphology, revealing highly oriented polycrystalline and stoichiometric EuS films. UV/vis measurements yielded a band gap of around 1.6 eV, and Raman spectroscopy exhibited a coupling between the phonons and electron spin systems of EuS. These findings, together with the soft ferromagnetic character of the films derived from semiconducting quantum interference device measurements, signify the potential of CVD-grown EuS for future technological applications. © 2021 American Chemical Society.

Premature failure of rail and bearing steels by White-Etching-Cracks leads to severe economic losses. This failure mechanism is associated with microstructure decomposition via local severe plastic deformation. The decomposition of cementite plays a key role. Due to the high hardness of this phase, it is the most difficult obstacle to overcome in the decaying microstructure. Understanding the mechanisms of carbide decomposition is essential for designing damage-resistant steels for industrial applications. We investigate cementite decomposition in the bearing steel 100Cr6 (AISI 52100) upon exposure to high-pressure torsion (maximum shear strain, Ƴmax = 50.2). Following-up on our earlier work on cementite decomposition in hardened 100Cr6 steel (Qin et al., Act. Mater. 2020 [1]), we now apply a modified heat treatment to generate a soft-annealed microstructure where spherical and lamellar cementite precipitates are embedded in a ferritic matrix. These two precipitate types differ in morphology (spherical vs. lamellar), size (spherical: 100–1000 nm diameter, lamellar: 40–100 nm thickness) and composition (Cr and Mn partitioning). We unravel the correlation between cementite type and its resistance to decomposition using multi-scale chemical and structural characterization techniques. Upon high-pressure torsion, the spherical cementite precipitates did not decompose, but the larger spherical precipitates (≥ 1 μm) deformed. In contrast, the lamellar cementite precipitates underwent thinning followed by decomposition and dissolution. Moreover, the decomposition behavior of cementite precipitates is affected by the type of matrix microstructure. We conclude that the cementite size and morphology, as well as the matrix mechanical properties are the predominating factors influencing the decomposition behavior of cementite. The compositional effects of Cr and Mn on cementite stability calculated by complementary density functional theory (DFT) calculations are minor in the current scenario. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.

Recent advances in the field of diffusion in multiprincipal element systems are critically reviewed, with an emphasis on experimental as well as theoretical approaches to determining atomic mobilities (tracer diffusion coefficients) in chemically complex multicomponent systems. The newly elaborated and augmented pseudobinary and pseudoternary methods provide a rigorous framework to access tracer, intrinsic, and interdiffusion coefficients in alloys with an arbitrary number of components. Utilization of the novel tracer-interdiffusion couple method allows for a high-throughput determination of composition-dependent tracer diffusion coefficients. A combination of these approaches provides a unique experimental toolbox to access diffusivities of elements that do not have suitable tracers. The pair-exchange diffusion model, which gives a consistent definition of diffusion matrices without specifying a reference element, is highlighted. Density-functional theory-informed calculations of basic diffusion properties mdash asrequired for the generation of extensive mobility databases for technological applications mdash are also discussed. © 2022 Annual Reviews Inc.. All rights reserved.

High-entropy alloys are solid solutions of multiple principal elements that are capable of reaching composition and property regimes inaccessible for dilute materials. Discovering those with valuable properties, however, too often relies on serendipity, because thermodynamic alloy design rules alone often fail in high-dimensional composition spaces. We propose an active learning strategy to accelerate the design of high-entropy Invar alloys in a practically infinite compositional space based on very sparse data. Our approach works as a closed-loop, integrating machine learning with density-functional theory, thermodynamic calculations, and experiments. After processing and characterizing 17 new alloys out of millions of possible compositions, we identified two high-entropy Invar alloys with extremely low thermal expansion coefficients around 2 × 10−6 per degree kelvin at 300 kelvin. We believe this to be a suitable pathway for the fast and automated discovery of high-entropy alloys with optimal thermal, magnetic, and electrical properties. Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved.

The commonly employed supercell approach for defects in crystalline materials may introduce spurious interactions between the defect and its periodic images. A rich literature is available on how the interaction energies can be estimated, reduced, or corrected. A simple and seemingly straightforward approach is to extrapolate from a series of finite supercell sizes to the infinite-size limit, assuming a smooth polynomial dependence of the energy on inverse supercell size. In this work, we demonstrate by means of explict density-functional theory supercell calculations and simplified models that wave-function overlap and electrostatic interactions lead to more complex dependencies on supercell size than commonly assumed. We show that this complexity cannot be captured by the simple extrapolation approaches and that suitable correction schemes should be employed. Published by the American Physical Society

Halogen bonding has recently been recognized as an interaction whose relevance is on par with hydrogen bonding. While observed frequently in solution chemistry, the significance of halogen bonds in forming extended supramolecular structures on surfaces is less explored. Herein, we report on the self-assembly of chlorobenzene molecules adsorbed on the Cu(111) surface into nanosized clusters at submonolayer coverages, where the molecular planes are close to parallel to the surface. A comprehensive study of the role of intermolecular interactions through both halogen and weak hydrogen bonds on nanocluster formation is presented, gained by combining the results of temperature-programmed desorption, reflection-absorption infrared spectroscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, and density functional theory calculations. Based on an unprecedented precise determination of the molecules’ orientation within the clusters, the binding motifs that lead to the formation and stability of nanoclusters with magic sizes are identified and explained. A complex and delicate interplay of halogen bonds with weak hydrogen bonds, van-der-Waals forces, and surface–adsorbate interactions leads to a preference for hexamers and tetramers with an observable propensity for halogen bonding over weak hydrogen bonding when adsorbed to the Cu(111) surface. © 2021 American Chemical Society

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and density functional theory (DFT) were used to study the tautomerization reaction of an H2Pc molecule adsorbed on a Ag(100) surface. The presence of two hydrogen atoms in the cavity of the H2Pc molecule enforces the existence of two molecular tautomers. It causes a reduction from 4- to 2-fold symmetry in STM images that can be recorded as two current states over the H2Pc molecule with a high-to-low current state ratio of ∼1.2. These findings are confirmed by the spatial distributions of the all-atom electron charge density calculated by using DFT and transmission maps together with tunneling current ratios (∼1.2) determined from the nonequilibrium Green's function transport calculations. Therefore, we demonstrate that an H2Pc molecule adsorbed on a Ag(100) surface is a good candidate for a bistable molecular conductance switch since neither the presence of the Ag(100) surface nor that of the STM tip alters the tautomerization. © 2022 American Chemical Society.

Ni-Mn-based Heusler alloys have a high technical potential related to a large change of magnetization at the structural phase transition. These alloys show a subtle dependence of magnetic properties and structural phase stability on composition and substitution by 3d elements and although they have been extensively investigated, there are still ambiguities in the published results and their interpretation. To shed light on the large spread of reported properties, we perform a comprehensive study by means of density functional theory calculations. We focus on Cr and Co co-substitution whose benefit has been predicted previously for the expensive Ni-Mn-In-based alloy and study the more abundant iso-electronic counterpart Ni-Mn-Ga. We observe that substituting Ni partially by Co and/or Cr enhances the magnetization of the Heusler alloy and at the same time reduces the structural transition temperature. Thereby, Cr turns out to be more efficient to stabilize the ferromagnetic alignment of the Mn spins by strong antiferromagnetic interactions between Mn and Cr atoms. In a second step, we study Cr on the other sublattices and observe that an increase in the structural transition temperature is possible, but depends critically on the short-range order of Mn and Cr atoms. Based on our results, we are able to estimate composition dependent magnetic phase diagrams. In particular, we demonstrate that neither the atomic configuration with the lowest energy nor the results based on the coherent potential approximation are representative for materials with a homogeneous distribution of atoms and we also predict a simple method for fast screening of different concentrations which can be viewed as a blueprint for the study of high entropy alloys. Our results help to explain the large variation of experimentally found materials properties. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.

We study single-site and two-site defect structures in B2-type Fe-Al alloys by means of density functional theory supercell calculations. The defect formation energies are calculated as functions of the chemical potential, which are used to obtain the dependence of the defect concentrations on Al content at different temperatures. We also examine the converging behavior of the formation energies with respect to the supercell size to study the corresponding limit of dilute defects. The effect of magnetism is investigated by considering nonmagnetic, ferromagnetic, and paramagnetic states, calculations for the latter showing that the magnitude of the local magnetic moments strongly impacts the defect formation energies. The methodological studies are used to provide explanations for the wide spread of defect formation energies reported by experiments and other theoretical investigations. Based on these insights, the stability of the B2-FeAl structure as a function of Al concentration is obtained and discussed. © 2022 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

Tungsten-tungsten carbide (W/W2C) composites are considered as possible structural materials for future nuclear fusion reactors. Here, we report on the effect of helium (He) implantation on microstructure evolution of polycrystalline W/W2C composite consolidated by field-assisted sintering technique (FAST), homogenously implanted at room temperature with 1 MeV 4He+ ions at the fluence of 8 × 1016 ions cm−2 and annealed at 1873 K for 20 minutes. Samples were analysed by scanning and transmission electron microscopy to study the presence and size of He bubbles. Monomodal He bubbles in W (30-80 nm) are limited to point defects and grain boundaries, with a considerable void denuded zone (150 nm). Bubbles do not form in W2C, but at the W|W2C interface and are considerably larger (200-400 nm). The experimental observations on He behaviour and migration in W and W2C were assessed by density functional theory (DFT) calculations, suggesting He migration and accumulation in the composite are determined by the effective He-He binding in clusters, which will give rise to decohesion. In the presence of He clusters, the decohesion of bulk W into free surfaces is energetically highly favourable but not sufficient in the W2C; hence bubbles are only observed in W grains and interfaces and not within bulk W2C. © 2022

Water diffusion across the surfaces of materials is of importance to disparate processes such as water purification, ice formation, and more. Despite reports of rapid water diffusion on surfaces the molecular level, details of such processes remain unclear. Here, with scanning tunneling microscopy, we observe structural rearrangements and diffusion of water trimers at unexpectedly low temperatures (<10 K) on a copper surface, temperatures at which water monomers or other clusters do not diffuse. Density functional theory calculations reveal a facile trimer diffusion process involving transformations between elongated and almost cyclic conformers in an inchworm-like manner. These subtle intermolecular reorientations maintain an optimal balance of hydrogen-bonding and water–surface interactions throughout the process. This work shows that the diffusion of hydrogen-bonded clusters can occur at exceedingly low temperatures without the need for hydrogen bond breakage or exchange; findings that will influence Ostwald ripening of ice nanoclusters and hydrogen bonded clusters in general. © 2021 American Chemical Society

To better understand why amines catalyze the reactivity of SiOH with silanes, we examined the adsorption of trimethylamine under a low pressure (10-9-10-8 mbar) and a low temperature (105-160 K) on water-terminated (H,OH)-Si(001), which is both a model surface for adsorption studies and a promising starting substrate for atomic layer deposition. Trimethylamine bonding configurations were determined by combining real-time synchrotron radiation X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy (HREELS) with density functional theory (DFT) calculations of core-level ionization energies and vibrational spectra. Both spectroscopies showed that the majority of species are trimethylamine molecules making acceptor H bonds with surface hydroxyls. Moreover, HREELS indicated that the hydrogen-bonding modes (single and double hydrogen acceptor bonds) depend on temperature and/or coverage, which may in turn affect the weakening of the O-H bond, and hence the catalytic effects of trimethylamine. XPS also clearly detected a minority species, trimethylamine, datively bonded to the isolated silicon dangling bonds (a few 1/100th of a monolayer). This species is prone to breaking, and a detailed analysis of the reaction products was made. The reactivity of the electrically active isolated silicon dangling bonds with the amine may impact the Fermi-level position in the gap. © 2022 American Chemical Society

Deciphering the influence of nanocatalyst morphology on their catalytic activity in the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), the limiting reaction in water splitting process, is essential to develop highly active precious metal-free catalysts, yet poorly understood. The intrinsic OER activity of Co3O4 nanocubes and spheroids is probed at the single particle level to unravel the correlation between exposed facets, (001) vs. (111), and activity. Single cubes with predominant (001) facets show higher activity than multi-faceted spheroids. Density functional theory calculations of different terminations and reaction sites at (001) and (111) surfaces confirm the higher activity of the former, expressed in lower overpotentials. This is rationalized by a change in the active site from octahedral to tetrahedral Co and the potential-determining step from *OH to *O for the cases with lowest overpotentials at the (001) and (111) surfaces, respectively. This approach enables the identification of highly active facets to guide shape-selective syntheses of improved metal oxide nanocatalysts for water oxidation. © 2022 The Authors. Advanced Functional Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.

Iron and cobalt-based oxides crystallizing in the spinel structure are efficient and affordable catalysts for the oxidation of organics, yet, the detailed understanding of their surface structure and reactivity is limited. To fill this gap, we have investigated the (001) surfaces of cobalt ferrite, CoFe2O4, with the A- and B-layer terminations using density functional theory (DFT/PBE0) and an embedded cluster model. We have considered the five-fold coordinated Co2+/3+ (Oh), two-fold coordinated Fe2+ (Td), and an oxygen vacancy, as active sites for the adsorption of water and short-chain alcohols: methanol, ethanol, and 2-propanol, in the low coverage regime. The adsorbates dissociate upon adsorption on the Fe sites whereas the adsorption is mainly molecular on Co. At oxygen vacancies, the adsorbates always dissociate, fill the vacancy and form (partially) hydroxylated surfaces. The computed vibrational spectra for the most stable configurations are compared with results from diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy. © 2022 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Atom probe tomography (APT) analysis is being actively used to provide near-atomic-scale information on the composition of complex materials in three-dimensions. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the technique to investigate the distribution of hydrogen in metals. However, the presence of hydrogen in the analysis of almost all specimens from nearly all material systems has caused numerous debates as to its origins and impact on the quantitativeness of the measurement. It is often perceived that most H arises from residual gas ionization, therefore affecting primarily materials with a relatively low evaporation field. In this work, we perform systematic investigations to identify the origin of H residuals in APT experiments by combining density-functional theory (DFT) calculations and APT measurements on an alkali and a noble metal, namely Na and Pt, respectively. We report that no H residual is found in Na metal samples, but in Pt, which has a higher evaporation field, a relatively high signal of H is detected. These results contradict the hypothesis of the H signal being due to direct ionization of residual H2 without much interaction with the specimen's surface. Based on DFT, we demonstrate that alkali metals are thermodynamically less likely to be subject to H contamination under APT-operating conditions compared to transition or noble metals. These insights indicate that the detected H-signal is not only from ionization of residual gaseous H2 alone, but is strongly influenced by material-specific physical properties. The origin of H residuals is elucidated by considering different conditions encountered during APT experiments, specifically, specimen-preparation, transportation, and APT-operating conditions by taking thermodynamic and kinetic aspects into account. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the Institute of Physics and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.

Although titanium nitride (TiN) is among the most extensively studied and thoroughly characterized thin-film ceramic materials, detailed knowledge of relevant dislocation core structures is lacking. By high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) of epitaxial single crystal (001)-oriented TiN films, we identify different dislocation types and their core structures. These include, besides the expected primary a/2{110}〈11–0〉 dislocation, Shockley partial dislocations a/6{111}〈112–〉 and sessile Lomer edge dislocations a/2{100}〈011〉. Density-functional theory and classical interatomic potential simulations complement STEM observations by recovering the atomic structure of the different dislocation types, estimating Peierls stresses, and providing insights on the chemical bonding nature at the core. The generated models of the dislocation cores suggest locally enhanced metal–metal bonding, weakened Ti-N bonds, and N vacancy-pinning that effectively reduces the mobilities of {110}〈11–0〉 and {111}〈112–〉 dislocations. Our findings underscore that the presence of different dislocation types and their effects on chemical bonding should be considered in the design and interpretations of nanoscale and macroscopic properties of TiN. © 2022 The Authors

We investigated the effects of interstitial N and C on the stacking fault energy (SFE) of an equiatomic CoCrNi medium entropy alloy. Results of computer modeling were compared to tensile deformation and electron microscopy data. Both N and C in solid solution increase the SFE of the face-centered cubic (FCC) alloy matrix at room temperature, with the former having a more significant effect by 240% for 0.5 at % N. Total energy calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) as well as thermodynamic modeling of the Gibbs free energy with the CALPHAD (CALculation of PHAse Diagrams) method reveal a stabilizing effect of N and C interstitials on the FCC lattice with respect to the hexagonal close-packed (HCP) CoCrNi-X (X: N, C) lattice. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) measurements of the width of dissociated ½<110> dislocations suggest that the SFE of CoCrNi increases from 22 to 42–44 mJ·m−2 after doping the alloy with 0.5 at. % interstitial N. The higher SFE reduces the nucleation rates of twins, leading to an increase in the critical stress required to trigger deformation twinning, an effect which can be used to design load-dependent strain hardening response. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by National Institute for Materials Science in partnership with Taylor & Francis Group.

Second nearest neighbor modified embedded atom method (2NN-MEAM) interatomic potentials are developed for the Ni, Re, and Ni-Re binaries. To construct the potentials, density functional theory (DFT) calculations have been employed to calculate fundamental physical properties that play a dominant role in fracture. The potentials are validated to accurately reproduce material properties that correlate with material's fracture behavior. The thus constructed potentials were applied to perform large scale simulations of mode I fracture in Ni and Ni-Re binaries with low Re content. Substitutional Re did not alter the ductile nature of crack propagation, though it resulted in a monotonous increase of the critical stress intensity factor with Re content. © 2021 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.

The microstructure of advanced high-strength steels often shows a sensitive dependence on alloying. For example, adding Cr to improve the corrosion resistance of medium-Mn steels also enhances the precipitation of carbides. The current study focuses on the behavior of H in such complex multicomponent carbides by employing different methodological strategies. We systematically analyze the impact of Cr, Mn, and Fe using density functional theory (DFT) for two prototype precipitate phases, M3C and M23C6, where M represents the metal sublattice. Our results show that the addition of these alloying elements yields strong nonmonotonic chemical trends for the H solubility. We identify magnetovolume effects as the origin for this behavior, which depend on the considered system, the sites occupied by H, and short- vs long-range interactions between H and the alloying elements. We further show that the H solubility is directly correlated with the occupation of its nearest-neighbor shells by Cr and Mn. Based on these insights, DFT data from H containing binary-metal carbides are used to design a ridge regression based model that predicts the solubility of H in the ternary-metal carbides (Fe-Cr-Mn-C). © 2022 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.

Knowledge of magnetic symmetry is vital for exploiting nontrivial surface states of magnetic topological materials. EuIn2As2 is an excellent example, as it is predicted to have collinear antiferromagnetic order where the magnetic moment direction determines either a topological-crystalline-insulator phase supporting axion electrodynamics or a higher-order-topological-insulator phase with chiral hinge states. Here, we use neutron diffraction, symmetry analysis, and density functional theory results to demonstrate that EuIn2As2 actually exhibits low-symmetry helical antiferromagnetic order which makes it a stoichiometric magnetic topological-crystalline axion insulator protected by the combination of a 180∘ rotation and time-reversal symmetries: C2× T= 2 ′. Surfaces protected by 2 ′ are expected to have an exotic gapless Dirac cone which is unpinned to specific crystal momenta. All other surfaces have gapped Dirac cones and exhibit half-integer quantum anomalous Hall conductivity. We predict that the direction of a modest applied magnetic field of μ0H ≈ 1 to 2 T can tune between gapless and gapped surface states. © 2021, This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply.

We obtain parameters for nonorthogonal and orthogonal tight-binding (TB) models from two-atomic molecules for all combinations of elements of period 1 to 6 and group 3 to 18 of the periodic table. The TB bond parameters for 1711 homoatomic and heteroatomic dimers show clear chemical trends. In particular, using our parameters we compare to the rectangular d-band model, the reduced sp TB model, as well as canonical TB models for sp- and d-valent systems, which have long been used to gain qualitative insight into the interatomic bond. The transferability of our dimer-based TB bond parameters to bulk systems is discussed exemplarily for the bulk ground-state structures of Mo and Si. Our dimer-based TB bond parameters provide a well-defined and promising starting point for developing refined TB parametrizations and for making the insight of TB available for guiding materials design across the periodic table. © 2021 American Physical Society.

We present an automatized workflow which, starting from molecular dynamics simulations, identifies reaction events, filters them, and prepares them for accurate quantum chemical calculations using, for example, Density Functional Theory (DFT) or Coupled Cluster methods. The capabilities of the automatized workflow are demonstrated by the example of simulations for the combustion of some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). It is shown how key elementary reaction candidates are filtered out of a much larger set of redundant reactions and refined further. The molecular species in question are optimized using DFT and reaction energies, barrier heights, and reaction rates are calculated. The setup is general enough to include at this stage configurational sampling, which can be exploited in the future. Using the introduced machinery, we investigate how the observed reaction types depend on the gas atmosphere used in the molecular dynamics simulation. For the re-optimization on the DFT level, we show how the additional information needed to switch from reactive force-field to electronic structure calculations can be filled in and study how well ReaxFF and DFT agree with each other and shine light on the perspective of using more accurate semi-empirical methods in the MD simulation. © 2021 The Authors. Journal of Computational Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Removing artificial bands from the back side of surface slabs with pseudohydrogen atoms has become the method of choice to boost the convergence of density-functional theory (DFT) surface calculation with respect to slab thickness. In this paper we apply this approach to semipolar compound semiconductor surfaces, which have recently become attractive for device applications. We show that approaches employing saturation of dangling bonds by pseudohydrogen atoms alone are inadequate to properly passivate the surfaces, remove spurious surface states from the fundamental band gap, and achieve flat band conditions in the slab. We propose and successfully apply to technologically interesting semipolar wurtzite surfaces of III-N, III-V, and II-VI semiconductors a reconstruction-inspired passivation scheme that utilizes native anions to passivate cation dangling bonds and pseudohydrogen atoms to obey the electron counting rule and compensate for polarization-induced surface-bound charges. This scheme is generic and robust and can be straightforwardly implemented in DFT investigations of low-symmetry surfaces as well as in high-throughput and machine learning studies. © 2021 authors.

Unraveling the atomistic and the electronic structure of solid-liquid interfaces is the key to the design of new materials for many important applications, from heterogeneous catalysis to battery technology. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations can, in principle, provide a reliable description of such interfaces, but the high computational costs severely restrict the accessible time and length scales. Here, we report machine learning-driven simulations of various interfaces between water and lithium manganese oxide (LixMn2O4), an important electrode material in lithium ion batteries and a catalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction. We employ a high-dimensional neural network potential to compute the energies and forces several orders of magnitude faster than DFT without loss in accuracy. In addition, a high-dimensional neural network for spin prediction is utilized to analyze the electronic structure of the manganese ions. Combining these methods, a series of interfaces is investigated by large-scale molecular dynamics. The simulations allow us to gain insights into a variety of properties, such as the dissociation of water molecules, proton transfer processes, and hydrogen bonds, as well as the geometric and electronic structure of the solid surfaces, including the manganese oxidation state distribution, Jahn-Teller distortions, and electron hopping. © 2021 Author(s).

The electronic structure in unconventional superconductors holds a key to understanding the momentum-dependent pairing interactions and the resulting superconducting gap function. In superconducting Fe-based chalcogenides, there have been controversial results regarding the importance of the kz dependence of the electronic dispersion, the gap structure, and the pairing mechanisms. Here, we use density functional theory to investigate the underlying structural properties in combination with a sophisticated real-space treatment of magnetic disorder for the prototype system FeSe. Our calculations demonstrate that interlayer and intralayer interactions need to be considered and that charge-driven van der Waals interactions between Se atoms instead of magnetic coupling effects drive the interlayer binding. The methodological advances and physical insights are important for upcoming investigations of the three-dimensional effects, including nontrivial topology, of FeSe1-xTex and FeSe1-xSx systems. © 2021 American Physical Society.

A mononuclear oxoiron(iv) complex1-transbearing two equatorial sulfur ligations is synthesized and characterized as an active-site model of the elusive sulfur-ligated FeIVO intermediates in non-heme iron oxygenases. The introduction of sulfur ligands weakens the Fe-O bond and enhances the oxidative reactivity of the FeIVO unit with a diminished deuterium kinetic isotope effect, thereby providing a compelling rationale for nature's use of thecis-thiolate ligated oxoiron(iv) motif in key metabolic transformations. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2021.

The low-temperature plasticity of body-centered cubic (bcc) metals is governed by [Formula presented] screw dislocations due to their compact, non-planar core. It has been proposed that 70.5° mixed (M111) dislocations may also exhibit special core structures and comparably large Peierls stresses, but the theoretical and experimental evidence is still incomplete. In this work, we present a detailed comparative study of the M111 dislocation in five bcc transition metals on the basis of atomistic simulations. We employ density functional theory and semi-empirical interatomic potentials to investigate both the core structure and the Peierls barrier of the M111 dislocation. Our calculations demonstrate that reliable prediction of M111 properties presents not only a very stringent test for the reliability of interatomic potentials but is also challenging for first-principles calculations for which careful convergence studies are required. Our study reveals that the Peierls barrier and stress vary significantly for different bcc transition metals. Sizable barriers are found for W and Mo while for Nb, Ta and Fe the barrier is comparably small. Our predictions are consistent with internal friction measurements and provide new insights into the plasticity of bcc metals. © 2021 Acta Materialia Inc.

We studied the electronic structure of PtPb4 using laser angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. This material is closely related to PtSn4, which exhibits exotic topological properties such as Dirac node arcs. The Fermi surface (FS) of PtPb4 consists of two electron pockets at the center of the Brillouin zone (BZ) and several hole pockets around the zone boundaries. Our ARPES data reveal significant Rashba splitting at the Γ point, in agreement with DFT calculations. The presence of Rashba splitting may render this material of potential interest for spintronic applications. © 2021 American Physical Society.

A systematic study of the compression creep properties of a single-crystalline Co-base superalloy (Co-9Al-7.5W-2Ta) was conducted at 950, 975 and 1000°C to reveal the influence of temperature and the resulting diffusion velocity of solutes like Al, W and Ta on the deformation mechanisms. Two creep rate minima are observed at all temperatures indicating that the deformation mechanisms causing these minima are quite similar. Atom-probe tomography analysis reveals elemental segregation to stacking faults, which had formed in the γ′ phase during creep. Density-functional-theory calculations indicate segregation of W and Ta to the stacking fault and an associated considerable reduction of the stacking fault energy. Since solutes diffuse faster at a higher temperature, segregation can take place more quickly. This results in a significantly faster softening of the alloy, since cutting of the γ′ precipitate phase by partial dislocations is facilitated through segregation already during the early stages of creep. This is confirmed by transmission electron microscopy analysis. Therefore, not only the smaller precipitate fraction at higher temperatures is responsible for the worse creep properties, but also faster diffusion-assisted shearing of the γ′ phase by partial dislocations. The understanding of these mechanisms will help in future alloy development by offering new design criteria. © 2021

Body-centered cubic (bcc) Fe-Mn systems are known to exhibit a complex and atypical magnetic behavior from both experiments and 0 K electronic-structure calculations, which is due to the half-filled 3d band of Mn. We propose effective interaction models for these alloys, which contain both atomic-spin and chemical variables. They were parameterized on a set of key density functional theory (DFT) data, with the inclusion of noncollinear magnetic configurations being indispensable. Two distinct approaches, namely a knowledge-driven and a machine-learning approach have been employed for the fitting. Employing these models in atomic Monte Carlo simulations enables the prediction of magnetic and thermodynamic properties of the Fe-Mn alloys, and their coupling, as functions of temperature. This includes the decrease of Curie temperature with increasing Mn concentration, the temperature evolution of the mixing enthalpy, and its correlation with the alloy magnetization. Also, going beyond the defect-free systems, we determined the binding free energy between a vacancy and a Mn atom, which is a key parameter controlling the atomic transport in Fe-Mn alloys. © 2021 American Physical Society.

We introduce a novel approach to sample the canonical ensemble at constant temperature and applied electric potential. Our approach can be straightforwardly implemented into any density-functional theory code. Using thermopotentiostat molecular dynamics simulations allows us to compute the dielectric constant of nanoconfined water without any assumptions for the dielectric volume. Compared to the commonly used approach of calculating dielectric properties from polarization fluctuations, our thermopotentiostat technique reduces the required computational time by 2 orders of magnitude. © 2021 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Density functional theory molecular dynamics simulations of H-covered Pt(111)-H2O interfaces reveal that, in contrast to common understanding, H2O coadsorption has a significant impact on the electrode potential of and plays a major role in determining the stability of H adsorbates under electrochemical conditions. Based on these insights, we explain the origin behind the experimentally observed upper limit of H coverage well below one monolayer and derive a chemically intuitive model for metal-water bonding that explains an unexpectedly large interaction between coadsorbed water and adsorbates. © 2021 authors.

We report the fabrication and characterization of molybdenum (Mo)-doped ZnV2O6/reduced graphene oxide (rGO) composite and its use as photoanode for photoelectrochemical (PEC) hydrogen production. Compared to pure ZnV2O6, Mo ions act as electron donor in the ZnV2O6:Mo lattice increasing charge carrier concentration and subsequently mobility in the bulk by the polaron transport. We measured the hole transfer efficiency for the pure and Mo-doped ZnV2O6 electrodes and revealing a substantial increase from 16 to 25%. The mechanism of enhanced photoactivity of Mo-doped ZnV2O6 was studied by density functional theory calculations. Moreover, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements show that graphene modification improves carrier separation and transfer across the electrode/electrolyte interface. Therefore, the combination of the two strategies triggers a synergistic enhancement in PEC performance in terms of incident photon-to-current efficiency, which is 17% at 370 nm, being 4.5- and 3.6-times greater than those of pristine ZnV2O6 and ZnV2O6:Mo photoanodes, respectively. With photocurrent onset potentials of 0.6 V and photocurrent densities of 2.07 mA/cm2 at 1.23 V vs. RHE, ZnV2O6:Mo/rGO photoanodes are of interest for the design of high performance PEC visible-light-induced water-splitting devices. © 2021

Owing to the limited availability of suitable precursors for vapor phase deposition of rare-earth containing thin-film materials, new or improved precursors are sought after. In this study, we explored new precursors for atomic layer deposition (ALD) of cerium (Ce) and ytterbium (Yb) containing thin films. A series of homoleptic tris-guanidinate and tris-amidinate complexes of cerium (Ce) and ytterbium (Yb) were synthesized and thoroughly characterized. The C-substituents on the N-C-N backbone (Me, NMe2, NEt2, where Me=methyl, Et=ethyl) and the N-substituents from symmetrical iso-propyl (iPr) to asymmetrical tertiary-butyl (tBu) and Et were systematically varied to study the influence of the substituents on the physicochemical properties of the resulting compounds. Single crystal structures of [Ce(dpdmg)3] 1 and [Yb(dpdmg)3] 6 (dpdmg=N,N'-diisopropyl-2-dimethylamido-guanidinate) highlight a monomeric nature in the solid-state with a distorted trigonal prismatic geometry. The thermogravimetric analysis shows that the complexes are volatile and emphasize that increasing asymmetry in the complexes lowers their melting points while reducing their thermal stability. Density functional theory (DFT) was used to study the reactivity of amidinates and guanidinates of Ce and Yb complexes towards oxygen (O2) and water (H2O). Signified by the DFT calculations, the guanidinates show an increased reactivity toward water compared to the amidinate complexes. Furthermore, the Ce complexes are more reactive compared to the Yb complexes, indicating even a reactivity towards oxygen potentially exploitable for ALD purposes. As a representative precursor, the highly reactive [Ce(dpdmg)3] 1 was used for proof-of-principle ALD depositions of CeO2 thin films using water as co-reactant. The self-limited ALD growth process could be confirmed at 160 °C with polycrystalline cubic CeO2 films formed on Si(100) substrates. This study confirms that moving towards nitrogen-coordinated rare-earth complexes bearing the guanidinate and amidinate ligands can indeed be very appealing in terms of new precursors for ALD of rare earth based materials. © 2020 The Authors. Chemistry - A European Journal published by Wiley-VCH GmbH

In this work, we report a new and promising approach toward the atomic layer deposition (ALD) of metallic Co thin films. Utilizing the simple and known CoCl2(TMEDA) (TMEDA = N,N,N′,N′-tetramethylethylenediamine) precursor in combination with the intramolecularly stabilized Zn aminoalkyl compound Zn(DMP)2 (DMP = dimethylaminopropyl) as an auxiliary reducing agent, a thermal ALD process is developed that enables the deposition of Zn-free Co thin films. ALD studies demonstrate the saturation behavior of both precursors and linearity depending on the applied number of cycles as well as temperature dependency of film growth in a regime of 140-215 °C. While the process optimization is carried out on Si with native oxide, additional growth studies are conducted on Au and Pt substrates. This study is complemented by initial reactivity and suitability tests of several potential Zn alkyl-reducing agents. For the CoCl2(TMEDA)-Zn(DMP)2 combination, these findings allow us to propose a series of elemental reaction steps hypothetically leading to pure Co film formation in the ALD process whose feasibility is probed by a set of density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The DFT results show that for reactions of the precursors in the gas phase and on Co(111) substrate surfaces, a pathway involving C-C coupling and diamine formation through reductive elimination of an intermediate Co(II) alkyl species is preferred. Co thin films with an average thickness of 10-25 nm obtained from the process are subjected to thorough analysis comprising atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry/nuclear reaction analysis as well as depth profiling X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS). From XPS analysis, it was found that graphitic and carbidic carbon coexist in the Co metal film bulk. Despite carbon concentrations of ∼20 at. % in the Co thin film bulk, resistivity measurements for ∼22 nm thick films grown on a defined SiO2 insulator layer yield highly promising values in a range of 15-20 μω cm without any postgrowth treatment. © 2021 American Chemical Society.

The repeated slab approach has become a de facto standard to accurately describe surface properties of materials by density functional theory calculations with periodic boundary conditions. For materials exhibiting spontaneous polarization, we show that the conventional scheme of passivation with pseudo hydrogen is unable to realize a charge-neutral surface. The presence of a net surface charge induces via Gauss’s law a macroscopic electric field through the slab and results in poor size convergence with respect to the thickness of the slab. We propose a modified passivation method that accounts for the effect of spontaneous polarization, describes the correct bulk limits and boosts convergence with respect to slab thickness. The robustness, reliability, and superior convergence of energetics and electronic structure achieved by the proposed method are demonstrated using the example of polar ZnO surfaces. © 2021, The Author(s).

We derive an effective field theory model for magnetic topological insulators and predict that a magnetic electronic gap persists on the surface for temperatures above the ordering temperature of the bulk. Our analysis also applies to interfaces of heterostructures consisting of a ferromagnetic and a topological insulator. In order to make quantitative predictions for  and for EuS- heterostructures, we combine the effective field theory method with density functional theory and Monte Carlo simulations. For we predict an upwards Néel temperature shift at the surface up to , while the EuS- interface exhibits a smaller relative shift. The effective theory also predicts induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions and a topological magnetoelectric effect, both of which feature a finite temperature and chemical potential dependence. © 2021 Published by the American Physical Society

Co3O4 nanospheres with a mean diameter of 19 nm were applied in the selective oxidation of 2-propanol to acetone in the gas phase. Compared with 9 nm spheres, the 19 nm spheres exhibited superior catalytic activity and stability with 100% selectivity to acetone up to 500 K. Transmission electron microscopy, N2 physisorption, 2-propanol and O2 temperature-programmed desorption, and 2-propanol temperature-programmed surface reaction in O2 were applied to characterize the bulk and surface properties. Despite the smaller specific surface area (35 m2 g-1), an increased 2-propanol adsorption capacity was observed for the larger nanospheres ascribed to a preferential (110) surface orientation. Temperature-programmed oxidation experiments after reaction showed multilayer coke deposition and severe reduction of the Co3O4 surface, but excellent stability was maintained at 430 K using the 19 nm spheres in a steady-state oxidation experiment for 100 h with only 10% loss of the initial activity. The good agreement of the 2-propanol decomposition profiles indicates that the superior activity is caused by the enhanced interaction of the larger nanospheres with O2. A Mars-van Krevelen mechanism on the (110) surface was identified by density functional theory calculations with a Hubbard U term, favoring faster reoxidation compared with the (100) surface predominantly exposed by the 9 nm spheres. © The Royal Society of Chemistry.

The restriction imposed by the lattice structure of different surfaces is used to investigate the influence of the distance between two monomers on their ability to bind to each other. We compare the interaction of ammonia monomers at two distinct distances imposed by the surface structure of a Cu(511) high-index surface to that of a Cu(110) low-index surface using low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy, inelastic tunneling spectroscopy, and density functional theory. Frustrated translational and rotational modes, the Mulliken and Bader charge analyses, and electrostatic potential mapping indicate chemisorption of ammonia monomers on both surfaces, with their dipoles oriented perpendicular to the surface plane. At a larger intermolecular distance of around 0.51 nm on step edges of Cu(511), the monomers slightly repel each other due to electrostatic repulsion. At a shorter distance of around 0.36 nm perpendicular to the close-packed rows on Cu(110), a noticeable charge transfer between adjacent monomers indicates binding, that is, dimer formation in parallel orientation. This binding energy of the molecules compensates for the electrostatic repulsion. Our results outline how the choice of the surface structure may be utilized to alter the intermolecular interaction of solvent molecules and to enforce or suppress dimer formation. ©

Machine learning potentials have emerged as a powerful tool to extend the time and length scales of first-principles quality simulations. Still, most machine learning potentials cannot distinguish different electronic spin arrangements and thus are not applicable to materials in different magnetic states. Here we propose spin-dependent atom-centered symmetry functions as a type of descriptor taking the atomic spin degrees of freedom into account. When used as an input for a high-dimensional neural network potential (HDNNP), accurate potential energy surfaces of multicomponent systems can be constructed, describing multiple collinear magnetic states. We demonstrate the performance of these magnetic HDNNPs for the case of manganese oxide, MnO. The method predicts the magnetically distorted rhombohedral structure in excellent agreement with density functional theory and experiment. Its efficiency allows to determine the Néel temperature considering structural fluctuations, entropic effects, and defects. The method is general and is expected to be useful also for other types of systems such as oligonuclear transition metal complexes. © 2021, The Author(s).

Nanoparticles have become increasingly interesting for a wide range of applications because in principle it is possible to tailor their properties by controlling size, shape, and composition. One of these applications is heterogeneous catalysis, and a fundamental understanding of the structural details of the nanoparticles is essential for any knowledge-based improvement of reactivity and selectivity. In this work, we investigate the atomic structure of brass nanoparticles containing up to 5000 atoms as a typical example for a binary alloy consisting of Cu and Zn. As systems of this size are too large for electronic structure calculations, in our simulations, we use a recently parameterized machine learning potential providing close to density functional theory accuracy. This potential is employed for a structural characterization as a function of chemical composition by various types of simulations such as Monte Carlo in the semigrand canonical ensemble and simulated annealing molecular dynamics. Our analysis reveals that the distribution of both elements in the nanoparticles is inhomogeneous, and zinc accumulates in the outermost layer, while the first subsurface layer shows an enrichment of copper. Only for high zinc concentrations, alloying can be found in the interior of the nanoparticles, and regular patterns corresponding to crystalline bulk phases of α-brass can then be observed. The surfaces of the investigated clusters exhibit well-ordered single-crystal facets, which can give rise to grain boundaries inside the clusters. The melting temperature of the nanoparticles is found to decrease with increasing zinc-atom fraction, a trend which is well known also for the bulk phase diagram of brass. © 2021 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.

It is widely accepted that the different types of crystalline imperfections, such as vacancies or dislocations, greatly influence a material's physical and mechanical properties. However, imaging individual vacancies in solids and revealing their atomic neighborhood remains one of the frontiers of microscopy and microanalysis. Here, we study a creep-deformed binary Ni-2 at.% Ta alloy. Atom probe tomography reveals a random distribution of Ta. Field ion microscopy, with contrast interpretation supported by density-functional theory and time-of-flight mass spectrometry, evidences a positive correlation of Ta with vacancies, supporting positive solute-vacancy interactions previously predicted by atomistic simulations. © 2021

Active, selective and stable catalysts are imperative for sustainable energy conversion, and engineering materials with such properties are highly desired. High-entropy alloys (HEAs) offer a vast compositional space for tuning such properties. Too vast, however, to traverse without the proper tools. Here, we report the use of Bayesian optimization on a model based on density functional theory (DFT) to predict the most active compositions for the electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) with the least possible number of sampled compositions for the two HEAs Ag-Ir-Pd-Pt-Ru and Ir-Pd-Pt-Rh-Ru. The discovered optima are then scrutinized with DFT and subjected to experimental validation where optimal catalytic activities are verified for Ag–Pd, Ir–Pt, and Pd–Ru binary alloys. This study offers insight into the number of experiments needed for optimizing the vast compositional space of multimetallic alloys which has been determined to be on the order of 50 for ORR on these HEAs. © 2021 The Authors. Angewandte Chemie International Edition published by Wiley-VCH GmbH

The synthesis and characterization of a series of closely related Y(iii) compounds comprising the formamidinate ligands (RNCHNR) (R = alkyl) is reported, with the scope of using them as prospective precursors for atomic layer deposition (ALD) of yttrium oxide (Y2O3) thin films. The influence of the side chain variation on the thermal properties of the resulting complexes is studied and benchmarked by thermal analysis and vapor pressure measurements. Density functional theory (DFT) studies give theoretical insights into the reactivity of the compounds towards water, which was targeted as a co-reactant for the deposition of Y2O3via thermal ALD in the next step. Among the four complexes analyzed, tris(N,N′-di-tert-butyl-formamidinato)yttrium(iii) [Y(tBu2-famd)3] 1 was found to possess enhanced thermal stability and was selected for Y2O3 ALD process development. A broad ALD window ranging from 200 °C to 325 °C was obtained, yielding films of high compositional quality. Furthermore, with a film density of (4.95 ± 0.05) g cm-1 close to the bulk value, polycrystalline fcc Y2O3 layers with a smooth topography resulted in promising dielectric properties when implemented in metal insulator semiconductor (MIS) capacitor structures. © 2021 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

We present a first principles-quality potential energy surface (PES) describing the inter-atomic forces for hydrogen atoms interacting with free-standing graphene. The PES is a high-dimensional neural network potential that has been parameterized to 75 945 data points computed with density-functional theory employing the PBE-D2 functional. Improving over a previously published PES [Jiang et al., Science, 2019, 364, 379], this neural network exhibits a realistic physisorption well and achieves a 10-fold reduction in the RMS fitting error, which is 0.6 meV per atom. The chemisorption barrier is 172 meV, which is lower than that of the REBO-EMFT PES (260 meV). We used this PES to calculate about 1.5 million classical trajectories with carefully selected initial conditions to allow for direct comparison to results of H- and D-atom scattering experiments performed at incidence translational energy of 1.9 eV and a surface temperature of 300 K. The theoretically predicted scattering angular and energy loss distributions are in good agreement with experiment, despite the fact that the experiments employed graphene grown on Pt(111). Compared to previous calculations, the agreement with experiments is improved. The remaining discrepancies between experiment and theory are likely due to the influence of the Pt substrate only present in the experiment. This journal is © the Owner Societies.

A comprehensive study of sillenite Bi12SiO20 single-crystal properties, including elastic stiffness and piezoelectric coefficients, dielectric permittivity, thermal expansion and molar heat capacity, is presented. Brillouin-interferometry measurements (up to 27 GPa), which were performed at high pressures for the first time, and ab initio calculations based on density functional theory (up to 50 GPa) show the stability of the sillenite structure in the investigated pressure range, in agreement with previous studies. Elastic stiffness coefficients c 11 and c 12 are found to increase continuously with pressure while c 44 increases slightly for lower pressures and remains nearly constant above 15 GPa. Heat-capacity measurements were performed with a quasi-adiabatic calorimeter employing the relaxation method between 2 K and 395 K. No phase transition could be observed in this temperature interval. Standard molar entropy, enthalpy change and Debye temperature are extracted from the data. The results are found to be roughly half of the previous values reported in the literature. The discrepancy is attributed to the overestimation of the Debye temperature which was extracted from high-temperature data. Additionally, Debye temperatures obtained from mean sound velocities derived by Voigt-Reuss averaging are in agreement with our heat-capacity results. Finally, a complete set of electromechanical coefficients was deduced from the application of resonant ultrasound spectroscopy between 103 K and 733 K. No discontinuities in the temperature dependence of the coefficients are observed. High-temperature (up to 1100 K) resonant ultrasound spectra recorded for Bi12 MO20 crystals revealed strong and reversible acoustic dissipation effects at 870 K, 960 K and 550 K for M = Si, Ge and Ti, respectively. Resonances with small contributions from the elastic shear stiffness c 44 and the piezoelectric stress coefficient e 123 are almost unaffected by this dissipation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.

Alkaline electrolyte solutions are important components in rechargeable batteries and alkaline fuel cells. As the ionic conductivity is thought to be a limiting factor in the performance of these devices, which are often operated at elevated temperatures, its temperature dependence is of significant interest. Here we use NaOH as a prototypical example of alkaline electrolytes, and for this system we have carried out reactive molecular dynamics simulations with an experimentally verified high-dimensional neural network potential derived from density-functional theory calculations. It is found that in concentrated NaOH solutions elevated temperatures enhance both the contributions of proton transfer to the ionic conductivity and deviations from the Nernst-Einstein relation. These findings are expected to be of practical relevance for electrochemical devices based on alkaline electrolyte solutions. This journal is © the Owner Societies.

Pd nanoparticles deposited on nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon are promising catalysts for highly selective and effective catalytic hydrogenation reactions. To design and utilize these novel catalysts, it is essential to understand the effect of N doping on the metal-support interactions. A combined experimental (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) and computational (density functional theory) approach is used to identify preferential adsorption sites and to give detailed explanations of the corresponding metal-support interactions. Pyridinic N atoms turned out to be the preferential adsorption sites for Pd nanoparticles on nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon, interacting through their lone pairs (LPs) with the Pd atoms via N-LP-Pd dσ and N-LP-Pd s and Pd dπ-π∗ charge transfer, which leads to a change in the Pd oxidation state. Our results evidence the existence of bifunctional palladium nanoparticles containing Pd0 and Pd2+ centers. © the Owner Societies.

The Co–V system has been reviewed. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations using the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) were used to obtain the energies for the end-members for all three intermediate phases, Co3V, σ and CoV3. Results from DFT calculations considering spin polarization were used to evaluate the CALPHAD (Calculation of phase diagrams) model parameters. The method to evaluate the contribution of the magnetism to the energies of Co-rich compounds that was introduced in our previous work is presented in more detail in the present work. For the description of the σ phase, the magnetic part of the total energy is included in the description of the pure Co end-member compound resulting in a non-linear description of the magnetic contribution over composition. The calculated phase diagram obtained from the present CALPHAD description is in good agreement with the experimental data. The metastable FCC-L12 phase diagram was calculated and compared with experimental data. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Lithium ion batteries often contain transition metal oxides such as LixMn2O4 (0 ≤ x ≤ 2). Depending on the Li content, different ratios of MnIII to MnIV ions are present. In combination with electron hopping, the Jahn-Teller distortions of the MnIIIO6 octahedra can give rise to complex phenomena such as structural transitions and conductance. While for small model systems oxidation and spin states can be determined using density functional theory (DFT), the investigation of dynamical phenomena by DFT is too demanding. Previously, we have shown that a high-dimensional neural network potential can extend molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of LixMn2O4 to nanosecond time scales, but these simulations did not provide information about the electronic structure. Here, we extend the use of neural networks to the prediction of atomic oxidation and spin states. The resulting high-dimensional neural network is able to predict the spins of the Mn ions with an error of only 0.03 We find that the Mn eg electrons are correctly conserved and that the number of Jahn-Teller distorted MnIIIO6 octahedra is predicted precisely for different Li loadings. A charge ordering transition is observed between 280 K and 300 K, which matches resistivity measurements. Moreover, the activation energy of the electron hopping conduction above the phase transition is predicted to be 0.18 eV, deviating only 0.02 eV from experiment. This work demonstrates that machine learning is able to provide an accurate representation of both the geometric and the electronic structure dynamics of LixMn2O4 on time and length scales that are not accessible by ab initio MD. © 2020 Author(s).

Water permeation between stacked layers of hBN sheets forming 2D nanochannels is investigated using large-scale ab initio-quality molecular dynamics simulations. A high-dimensional neural network potential trained on density-functional theory calculations is employed. We simulate water in van der Waals nanocapillaries and study the impact of nanometric confinement on the structure and dynamics of water using both equilibrium and nonequilibrium methods. At an interlayer distance of 10.2 Å confinement induces a first-order phase transition resulting in a well-defined AA-stacked bilayer of hexagonal ice. In contrast, for h < 9 Å, the 2D water monolayer consists of a mixture of different locally ordered patterns of squares, pentagons, and hexagons. We found a significant change in the transport properties of confined water, particularly for monolayer water where the water-solid friction coefficient decreases to half and the diffusion coefficient increases by a factor of 4 as compared to bulk water. Accordingly, the slip-velocity is found to increase under confinement and we found that the overall permeation is dominated by monolayer water adjacent to the hBN membranes at extreme confinements. We conclude that monolayer water in addition to bilayer ice has a major contribution to water transport through 2D nanochannels. Copyright © 2020 American Chemical Society.

We report on a multilayered structure comprising of rock-salt (rs) structured CrN layers of constant thickness and AlN layers of varying thicknesses, which surprisingly enables the growth of metastable zinc-blende (zb) AlN layers for certain layer-thickness combinations. The multilayer exhibits an atomic and electronic structure gradient as revealed using advanced electron microscopy and electron spectroscopy. Gradient structures are also accompanied by a modulation of the chemical compositions. A combined experimental analysis based on valence electrons and inner shell electrons allowed mapping the mechanical properties of the multilayer at the nanometer scale and further unveiled the effect of oxygen impurities on the bulk modulus. We found that the presence of oxygen impurities causes a remarkable reduction of the bulk modulus of rs-CrN while having no significant effect on the bulk modulus of the stable wurtzite structure wz-AlN layers. The findings are unambiguously validated by theoretical calculations using density functional theory. © 2020 Acta Materialia Inc.

The presence of facets and line junctions connecting facets on grain boundaries (GBs) has a strong impact on the properties of structural, functional, and optoelectronic materials: They govern the mobility of interfaces, the segregation of impurities, as well the electronic properties. In the present paper, we employ density-functional theory and modified embedded atom method calculations to systematically investigate the energetics and thermodynamic stability of these defects. As a prototype system, we consider ς3 tilt GBs in Si. By analyzing the energetics of different faceted GBs, we derive a diagram that describes and predicts the reconstruction of these extended defects as a function of facet length and boundary inclination angle. The phase diagram sheds light upon the fundamental mechanisms causing GB faceting phenomena. It demonstrates that the properties of faceting are not determined solely by anisotropic GB energies but by a complex interplay between geometry and microstructure, boundary energies as well as long-range strain interactions. © 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

Interatomic potentials are essential for studying fundamental mechanisms of deformation and failure in metals and alloys because the relevant defects (dislocations, cracks, etc.) are far above the scales accessible to first-principles studies. Existing potentials for non-fcc metals and nearly all alloys are, however, not sufficiently quantitative for many crucial phenomena. Here machine learning in the Behler-Parrinello neural-network framework is used to create a broadly applicable potential for pure hcp magnesium (Mg). Lightweight Mg and its alloys are technologically important while presenting a diverse range of slip systems and crystal surfaces relevant to both plasticity and fracture that present a significant challenge for any potential. The machine learning potential is trained on first-principles density-functional theory (DFT) computable metallurgically relevant properties and is then shown to well predict metallurgically crucial dislocation and crack structures and competing phenomena. Extensive comparisons to an existing very good modified embedded atom method potential are made. These results demonstrate that a single machine learning potential can represent the wide scope of phenomena required for metallurgical studies. The DFT database is openly available for use in any other machine learning method. The method is naturally extendable to alloys, which are necessary for engineering applications but where ductility and fracture are controlled by complex atomic-scale mechanisms that are not well predicted by existing potentials. © 2020 American Physical Society.

We reveal the impact of magnetic ordering on stacking fault energy (SFE) and its influence on the deformation mechanisms and mechanical properties in a class of nonequiatomic quinary Mn-containing compositional complex alloys or high entropy alloys (HEAs). By combining ab initio simulation and experimental validation, we demonstrate magnetic ordering as an important factor in the activation and transition of deformation modes from planar dislocation slip to TWIP (twinning-induced plasticity) and/or TRIP (transformation-induced plasticity). A wide compositional space of Cr20MnxFeyCo20Niz(x+y+z=60, at. %) was probed by density-functional theory calculations to search for potential alloys displaying the TWIP/TRIP effects. Three selected promising HEA compositions with varying Mn concentrations were metallurgically synthesized, processed, and probed for microstructure, deformation mechanism, and mechanical property evaluation. The differences in the deformation modes of the probed HEAs are interpreted in terms of the computed SFEs and their dependence on the predicted magnetic state, as revealed by ab initio calculations and validated by explicit magnetic measurements. It is found that the Mn content plays a key role in the stabilization of antiferromagnetic configurations which strongly impact the SFEs and eventually lead to the prevalent deformation behavior. © 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.

Two-dimensional stacking fault defects embedded in a bulk crystal can provide a homogeneous trapping potential for carriers and excitons. Here we utilize state-of-The-Art structural imaging coupled with density-functional and effective-mass theory to build a microscopic model of the stacking-fault exciton. The diamagnetic shift and exciton dipole moment at different magnetic fields are calculated and compared with the experimental photoluminescence of excitons bound to a single stacking fault in GaAs. The model is used to further provide insight into the properties of excitons bound to the double-well potential formed by stacking fault pairs. This microscopic exciton model can be used as an input into models which include exciton-exciton interactions to determine the excitonic phases accessible in this system. © 2020 American Physical Society.

We investigated the flow behavior of γ/γʹ-strengthened Co-12Ti and Co-12Ti-4Mo (at.%) alloys at room and elevated temperatures (up to 900°C) by electron microscopy and density functional theory. The Mo-added alloy exhibited an enhanced compressive yield strength and strain hardening behavior as compared to the reference binary alloy. This behavior could be attributed to a ~25% larger γʹ volume fraction and ~7% higher planar fault energies in Co-12Ti-4Mo. Using electron channeling contrast imaging, we observed interrupted slip bands in the Co-12Ti-4Mo alloy deformed to a strain of 6%, which led to enhanced strain hardening, in contrast to extended slip bands along {111} planes in the Co-12Ti alloy. Interrupted slip band formation in Co-12Ti-4Mo could be explained by rapid exhaustion of dislocation sources and a higher energy barrier required to cut the γʹ precipitates. These effects are due to a reduced γ channel width and substantial hardening effect of γʹ-Co3(Ti,Mo) in the ternary alloy as well as due to the large shear modulus difference between γʹ and γ. © 2020

Magnesium is the lowest-density structural metal but has low ductility that limits applications. The low ductility is related to the hexagonally close-packed crystal structure where activation of nonbasal slip is required for general plasticity. Here, our recent neural network potential (NNP) for Mg, trained using Kohn-Sham density functional theory (DFT), is used to examine slip of a dislocations on the prismatic plane. The generalized stacking fault surface energies (GSFEs) for basal and prismatic slip are computed and agree better with Kohn-Sham density functional theory (KS-DFT) than orbital-free density functional theory (OF-DFT) and modified embedded atom method (MEAM), which predict spurious minima. Consistent with the generalized stacking fault energy (GSFE), direct simulations of the prismatic a»screw dislocation show it is unstable to dissociate into the a basal screw dislocation; this is mostly consistent with OF-DFT while MEAM predicts stability. Prismatic slip is thus achieved by a double-cross-slip process of the stable basal dislocations driven by a resolved shear stress on the orthogonal prismatic plane; this is consistent with the process deduced from experiments. The Nudged Elastic Band method is used with the NNP to examine the atomistic path and the stress-dependent enthalpy barrier for this mechanism; this requires many tens of thousands of atoms. The basal-prismatic cross-slip occurs in increments of c/2 via basal constriction, cross-slip on the prism plane, cross-slip back onto the basal plane, and lateral motion of the created jogs to extend the new basal dislocation. Comparisons with experimental deductions show some agreement and some notable disagreement. Resolution of the differences points toward further large-scale studies that require the accuracy and efficiency of KS-DFT-trained NNP, an approach that is also naturally extendable to the important domain of Mg alloys. © 2020 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.

Amorphization plays an important role in ceramic deformation under mechanical loading. In the present work, we investigate the elasto-plastic deformation mechanisms of monocrystalline cubic silicon carbide (3C–SiC) in spherical nanoindentation by means of molecular dynamics simulations. The indentation-induced amorphization and its interactions with other deformation modes are emphasized. Initially, the suitable empirical potential capable of accurately characterizing the mechanical and defect properties of monocrystalline 3C–SiC, as well as the propensity of phase transformation from 3C–SiC to amorphous SiC, is rationally selected by benchmarking of different empirical potentials with experimental data and density functional theory calculations. Subsequently, the inhomogeneous elastic-plastic transitions during nanoindentation of monocrystalline 3C–SiC, as well as their dependence on crystallographic orientation, are investigated. Phase transformations including amorphization are analyzed using combined methods based on radial distribution function and bond angle distribution. Our simulation results demonstrate that before plasticity initiation-related “pop-in” event, each indented-monocrystalline 3C–SiC experiences a pure quasi-elastic deformation governed by the formation of amorphous structures. And this process of amorphization is fully reversible for small indentation depths. Further amorphization and dislocation nucleation jointly dominate the incipient plasticity in 3C–SiC nanoindentation. It is found that the indentation-induced defect zone composed of amorphous phase and dislocations is more pronounced in 3C–SiC(010) than that in the other two orientations of (110) and (111). © 2020 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l.

First-principles calculations of surfaces or two-dimensional materials with a finite surface charge invariably include an implicit or explicit compensating countercharge. We show that an ideal constant-charge counterelectrode in the vacuum region can be introduced by means of a simple correction to the electrostatic potential in close analogy to the well-known dipole correction for charge-neutral asymmetric slabs. Our generalized dipole correction accounts simultaneously for the sheet-charge electrode and the huge voltage built up between the system of interest and the counterelectrode. We demonstrate its usefulness for two prototypical cases, namely, field evaporation in the presence of huge electric fields (20 V/nm) and the modeling of charged defects at an insulator surface. We also introduce algorithmic improvements to charge initialization and preconditioning in the density functional theory algorithm that proved crucial for ensuring rapid convergence in slab systems with high electric fields. © 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

Hydrogen abstraction is one of the crucial initial key steps in the combustion of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. For an accurate theoretical prediction of heterogeneous combustion processes, larger systems need to be treated as compared to pure gas phase reactions. We address here the question on how transferable activation and reaction energies computed for small molecular models are to larger polyaromatics. The approximate transferability of energy contributions is a key assumption for multiscale modeling approaches. To identify efficient levels of accuracy, we start with accurate coupled-cluster and density functional theory (DFT) calculations for different sizes of polyaromatics. More approximate methods as the reactive force-field ReaxFF and the extended semi-empirical tight binding (xTB) methods are then benchmarked against these data sets in terms of reaction energies and equilibrium geometries. Furthermore, we analyze the role of bond-breaking and relaxation energies, vibrational contributions, and post-Hartree-Fock correlation corrections on the reaction, and for the activation energies, we analyze the validity of the Bell-Evans-Polanyi and Hammond principles. First, we find good transferability for this process and that the predictivity of small models at high theoretical levels is way superior than any approximate method can deliver. Second, ReaxFF can serve as a qualitative exploration method, whereas GFN2-xTB in combination with GFN1-xTB appears as a favorable tool to bridge between DFT and ReaxFF so that we propose a multimethod scheme with employing ReaxFF, GFN1/ GFN2-xTB, DFT, and coupled cluster to cope effectively with such a complex reactive system. © 2020 American Chemical Society

Machine learning of the quantitative relationship between local environment descriptors and the potential energy surface of a system of atoms has emerged as a new frontier in the development of interatomic potentials (IAPs). Here, we present a comprehensive evaluation of machine learning IAPs (ML-IAPs) based on four local environment descriptors - atom-centered symmetry functions (ACSF), smooth overlap of atomic positions (SOAP), the spectral neighbor analysis potential (SNAP) bispectrum components, and moment tensors - using a diverse data set generated using high-throughput density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The data set comprising bcc (Li, Mo) and fcc (Cu, Ni) metals and diamond group IV semiconductors (Si, Ge) is chosen to span a range of crystal structures and bonding. All descriptors studied show excellent performance in predicting energies and forces far surpassing that of classical IAPs, as well as predicting properties such as elastic constants and phonon dispersion curves. We observe a general trade-off between accuracy and the degrees of freedom of each model and, consequently, computational cost. We will discuss these trade-offs in the context of model selection for molecular dynamics and other applications. © 2020 American Chemical Society.

Laves phases belong to the group of tetrahedrally close-packed intermetallic phases, and their crystal structure can be described by discrete layer arrangements. They often possess extended homogeneity ranges and the general notion is that deviations from stoichiometry are accommodated by anti-site atoms or vacancies. The present work shows that excess Nb atoms in a Nb-rich NbFe2 C14 Laves phase can also be incorporated in various types of planar defects. Aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy and density functional theory calculations are employed to characterize the atomic configuration of these defects and to establish stability criteria for them. The planar defects can be categorized as extended or confined ones. The extended defects lie parallel to the basal plane of the surrounding C14 Laves phase and are fully coherent. They contain the characteristic Zr4Al3-type (O) units found in the neighboring Nb6Fe7 µ phase. An analysis of the chemical bonding reveals that the local reduction of the charge transfer is a possible reason for the preference of this atomic arrangement. However, the overall layer stacking deviates from that of the perfect µ phase. The ab initio calculations establish why these exceptionally layered defects can be more stable configurations than coherent nano-precipitates of the perfect µ phase. The confined defects are observed with pyramidal and basal habit planes. The pyramidal defect is only ~1 nm thick and resembles the perfect µ phase. In contrast, the confined basal defect can be regarded as only one single O unit and it appears as if the stacking sequence is disrupted. This configuration is confirmed by ab initio calculations to be metastable. © 2019

Lattice and magnetic degrees of freedom are strongly coupled in magnetic materials. We propose a consistent first-principles framework to explore the joint configurational space. For this, we define atomic spin moments from the projector augmented-wave formalism of density-functional theory and control them via Lagrangian constraints. We demonstrate our approach for vacancy formation and migration in collinear paramagnetic bcc iron by implementing a relaxation scheme based on spin-space averaged forces (SSA relaxation). Based on these results we discuss the impact of the magnetic state on vacancy formation energies, migration barriers, and relaxations. © 2020 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.

The lithium manganese oxide spinel LixMn2O4, with 0≤x≤2, is an important example for cathode materials in lithium ion batteries. However, an accurate description of LixMn2O4 by first-principles methods like density functional theory is far from trivial due to its complex electronic structure, with a variety of energetically close electronic and magnetic states. It was found that the local density approximation as well as the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) are unable to describe LixMn2O4 correctly. Here, we report an extensive benchmark for different LixMnyOz systems using the hybrid functionals PBE0 and HSE06, as well as the recently introduced local hybrid functional PBE0r. We find that all of these functionals yield energetic, structural, electronic, and magnetic properties in good agreement with experimental data. The notable benefit of the PBE0r functional, which relies on onsite Hartree-Fock exchange only, is a much reduced computational effort that is comparable to GGA functionals. Furthermore, the Hartree-Fock mixing factors in PBE0r are smaller than in PBE0, which improves the results for (lithium) manganese oxides. The investigation of LixMn2O4 shows that two Mn oxidation states, +III and +IV, coexist. The MnIII ions are in the high-spin state and the corresponding MnO6 octahedra are Jahn-Teller distorted. The ratio between MnIII and MnIV and thus the electronic structure changes with the Li content while no major structural changes occur in the range from x=0 to 1. This work demonstrates that the PBE0r functional provides an equally accurate and efficient description of the investigated LixMnyOz systems. © 2020 American Physical Society.

In this work, we report the thermodynamic modelling of the Ni–Zr system using the Calphad method combined with ab initio calculations. Density functional theory (DFT) is employed to calculate the enthalpy of formation of the intermediate phases. The calculated enthalpies of formation are in close agreement with the experimental data. An approach based on special quasirandom structures (SQS) was used for calculating the enthalpy of mixing of the fcc solid solution. The vibrational contribution to the heat capacities of NiZr, NiZr2, Ni3Zr and Ni7Zr2 phases were calculated using the quasiharmonic approximation (QHA) and the corresponding electronic contribution was obtained using an approach based on Mermin statistics. The total heat capacities for these phases were fitted to appropriate expressions and integrated to obtain the Gibbs energy functions valid down to 0 K. The calculated thermochemical properties along with critically selected experimental constitutional and thermochemical data served as input for the thermodynamic optimisation of the system. The calculated phase equilibria and the thermodynamic properties using the optimised Gibbs energy functions are in good agreement with the input data. The calculated congruent melting points of NiZr and NiZr2 phases are close to the recent experimental data. The Ni10Z7 phase forms by a peritectic reaction, which is also in agreement with the experimental data. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

The martensitic start temperature (M s) is a technologically fundamental characteristic of high-temperature shape memory alloys. We have recently shown [Chakraborty et al 2016 Phys. Rev. B 94 224104] that the two key features in describing the composition dependence of M s are the T = 0 K phase stability and the difference in vibrational entropy which, within the Debye model, is directly linked to the elastic properties. Here, we use density functional theory together with special quasi-random structures to study the elastic properties of disordered martensite and austenite Ti-Ta alloys as a function of composition. We observe a softening in the tetragonal shear elastic constant of the austenite phase at low Ta content and a non-linear behavior in the shear elastic constant of the martensite. A minimum of 12.5% Ta is required to stabilize the austenite phase at T = 0 K. Further, the shear elastic constants and Young's modulus of martensite exhibit a maximum for Ta concentrations close to 30%. Phenomenological, elastic-constant-based criteria suggest that the addition of Ta enhances the strength, but reduces the ductile character of the alloys. In addition, the directional elastic stiffness, calculated for both martensite and austenite, becomes more isotropic with increasing Ta content. The reported trends in elastic properties as a function of composition may serve as a guide in the design of alloys with optimized properties in this interesting class of materials. © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Many positive electrode materials in lithium ion batteries include transition metals, which are difficult to describe by electronic structure methods like density functional theory (DFT) due to the presence of multiple oxidation states. A prominent example is the lithium manganese oxide spinel LixMn2O4 with 0≤x≤2. While DFT, employing the local hybrid functional PBE0r, provides a reliable description, the need for extended computer simulations of large structural models remains a significant challenge. Here, we close this gap by constructing a DFT-based high-dimensional neural network potential (HDNNP) providing accurate energies and forces at a fraction of the computational costs. As different oxidation states and the resulting Jahn-Teller distortions represent a new level of complexity for HDNNPs, the potential is carefully validated by performing x-ray diffraction experiments. We demonstrate that the HDNNP provides atomic level details and is able to predict a series of properties like the lattice parameters and expansion with increasing Li content or temperature, the orthorhombic to cubic transition, the lithium diffusion barrier, and the phonon frequencies. We show that for understanding these properties access to large time and length scales as enabled by the HDNNP is essential to close the gap between theory and experiment. © 2020 American Physical Society.

Binary metal clusters are of high interest for applications in heterogeneous catalysis and have received much attention in recent years. To gain insights into their structure and composition at the atomic scale, computer simulations can provide valuable information if reliable interatomic potentials are available. In this paper we describe the construction of a high-dimensional neural network potential (HDNNP) intended for simulations of large brass nanoparticles with thousands of atoms, which is also applicable to bulk α-brass and its surfaces. The HDNNP, which is based on reference data obtained from density-functional theory calculations, is very accurate with a root-mean-square error of 1.7 meV/atom for total energies and 39 meV Å-1 for the forces of structures not included in the training set. The potential has been thoroughly validated for a wide range of energetic and structural properties of bulk α-brass, its surfaces as well as clusters of different size and composition demonstrating its suitability for large-scale molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations with first-principles accuracy. © 2020 American Chemical Society.

High strain-hardening rates in equiatomic CrCoNi and other multi-principal element alloys have been attributed to deformation twinning. This work shows that small additions of Al and Ti to a CrCoNi alloy deactivate deformation twinning with only minor changes to uniform elongation and ultimate tensile strength. The initial microstructure is free of chemically ordered (Al,Ti)-rich precipitates after solutionizing and quenching. Tensile properties for the alloy are reported and compared to equiatomic CrCoNi, and the post-deformation microstructure is assessed. Density functional theory calculations indicate that energetically unfavorable Al-Al bonds may discourage shearing via partial dislocations, which are necessary for twinning to occur. © 2019

Interatomic potentials are widely used in computational materials science, in particular for simulations that are too computationally expensive for density functional theory (DFT). Most interatomic potentials have a limited application range and often there is very limited information available regarding their performance for specific simulations. We carried out high-throughput calculations for molybdenum and silicon with DFT and a number of interatomic potentials. We compare the DFT reference calculations and experimental data to the predictions of the interatomic potentials. We focus on a large number of basic materials properties, including the cohesive energy, atomic volume, elastic coefficients, vibrational properties, thermodynamic properties, surface energies and vacancy formation energies, which enables a detailed discussion of the performance of the different potentials. We further analyze correlations between properties as obtained from DFT calculations and how interatomic potentials reproduce these correlations, and suggest a general measure for quantifying the accuracy and transferability of an interatomic potential. From our analysis we do not establish a clearcut ranking of the potentials as each potential has its strengths and weaknesses. It is therefore essential to assess the properties of a potential carefully before application of the potential in a specific simulation. The data presented here will be useful for selecting a potential for simulations of Mo or Si. © 2019 IOP Publishing Ltd.

An extensive characterization of Co3(PO4)2 was performed by topological analysis according to Bader‘s Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules from the experimentally and theoretically determined electron density. This study sheds light on the reactivity of cobalt orthophosphate as a solid-state heterogeneous oxidative-dehydration and -dehydrogenation catalyst. Various faces of the bulk catalyst were identified as possible reactive sites given their topological properties. The charge accumulations and depletions around the two independent five- and sixfold-coordinated cobalt atoms, found in the topological analysis, are correlated to the orientation and population of the d-orbitals. It is shown that the (011) face has the best structural features for catalysis. Fivefold-coordinated ions in close proximity to advantageously oriented vacant coordination sites and electron depletions suit the oxygen lone pairs of the reactant, mainly for chemisorption. This is confirmed both from the multipole refinement as well as from density functional theory calculations. Nearby basic phosphate ions are readily available for C−H activation. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

Titanium is the base material for a number of technologically important alloys for energy conversion and structural applications. Atomic-scale studies of Ti-based metals employing first-principles methods, such as density functional theory, are limited to ensembles of a few hundred atoms. To perform large-scale and/or finite temperature simulations, computationally more efficient interatomic potentials are required. In this work, we coarse grain the tight-binding (TB) approximation to the electronic structure and develop an analytic bond-order potential (BOP) for Ti by fitting to the energies and forces of elementary deformations of simple structures. The BOP predicts the structural properties of the stable and defective phases of Ti with a quality comparable to previous TB parameterizations at a much lower computational cost. The predictive power of the model is demonstrated for simulations of martensitic transformations. © 2019 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Long-range charge transport is important for many applications like batteries, fuel cells, sensors, and catalysis. Obtaining microscopic insights into the atomistic mechanism is challenging, in particular if the underlying processes involve protons as the charge carriers. Here, large-scale reactive molecular dynamics simulations employing an efficient density-functional-theory-based neural network potential are used to unravel long-range proton transport mechanisms at solid-liquid interfaces, using the zinc oxide-water interface as a prototypical case. We find that the two most frequently occurring ZnO surface facets, (1010) and (1120), that typically dominate the morphologies of zinc oxide nanowires and nanoparticles, show markedly different proton conduction behaviors along the surface with respect to the number of possible proton transfer mechanisms, the role of the solvent for long-range proton migration, as well as the proton transport dimensionality. Understanding such surface-facet-specific mechanisms is crucial for an informed bottom-up approach for the functionalization and application of advanced oxide materials. © 2019 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Thermodynamic properties of liquid water as well as hexagonal (Ih) and cubic (Ic) ice are predicted based on density functional theory at the hybrid-functional level, rigorously taking into account quantum nuclear motion, anharmonic fluctuations, and proton disorder. This is made possible by combining advanced free-energy methods and state-of-the-art machine-learning techniques. The ab initio description leads to structural properties in excellent agreement with experiments and reliable estimates of the melting points of light and heavy water. We observe that nuclear-quantum effects contribute a crucial 0.2 meV/H 2 O to the stability of ice Ih, making it more stable than ice Ic. Our computational approach is general and transferable, providing a comprehensive framework for quantitative predictions of ab initio thermodynamic properties using machine-learning potentials as an intermediate step. © 2019 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Light elements play a crucial role on the microstructure and properties of conventional alloys and steels. Oxygen is one of the light elements which is inevitably introduced into nanocrystalline alloys during manufacturing. Here, we report that severe plastic deformation can fragment the oxides formed in powder processing and eventually cause oxygen dissolution in the matrix. A comparative investigation on Cu-Fe nanocrystalline alloys generated from different initial materials, blended powders and arc-melted bulk materials which have different oxygen contents, reveals that fragmented oxides at grain boundaries effectively decrease the grain boundary mobility, markedly facilitating grain refinement. In contrast, those oxygen atoms dissolved as interstitials in the Cu-Fe matrix lead to lattice expansion and significant decrease of stacking fault energy locally as validated by density functional theory. Such oxygen-mediated microstructure gives rise to enhanced strength and superior structural stability. The remarkable tailoring effect of oxygen can be employed to engineer nanocrystalline materials with desired properties for different applications. © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

Quantitative and well-targeted design of modern alloys is extremely challenging due to their immense compositional space. When considering only 50 elements for compositional blending the number of possible alloys is practically infinite, as is the associated unexplored property realm. In this paper, we present a simple property-targeted quantitative design approach for atomic-level complexity in complex concentrated and high-entropy alloys, based on quantum-mechanically derived atomic-level pressure approximation. It allows identification of the best suited element mix for high solid-solution strengthening using the simple electronegativity difference among the constituent elements. This approach can be used for designing alloys with customized properties, such as a simple binary NiV solid solution whose yield strength exceeds that of the Cantor high-entropy alloy by nearly a factor of two. This study provides general design rules that enable effective utilization of atomic level information to reduce the immense degrees of freedom in compositional space without sacrificing physics-related plausibility. © 2019, The Author(s).

Large magnetocrystalline anisotropy (MCA) is of high technical relevance, in particular for magnetic actuators, permanent magnets, and memory devices with high density. Large MCAs have been reported for the low temperature L10 phase of Ni2MnGa. Both, Mn and Pt substitution can stabilize this phase at and above room temperature. Despite the larger spin-orbit coupling in the heavy 5d-element Pt, it has been reported that Pt substitution may result in degeneration of the MCA. In this paper, we study the MCA for a combination of epitaxial strain and Mn and Pt substitution based on density functional theory methods. We show that one can stabilize both large uniaxial and easy-plane anisotropies depending on the value of strain. In particular, small changes of the applied strain may allow to switch between low- and high-anisotropy states or even switch the direction of the easy-axis magnetization direction. © 1965-2012 IEEE.

We investigate the effect of oxygen vacancies and hydrogen dopants at the surface and inside slabs of LaAlO3, SrTiO3, and LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures on the electronic properties by means of electronic structure calculations as based on density functional theory. Depending on the concentration, the presence of these defects in a LaAlO3 slab can suppress the surface conductivity. In contrast, in insulating SrTiO3 slabs already very small concentrations of oxygen vacancies or hydrogen dopant atoms induce a finite occupation of the conduction band. Surface defects in insulating LaAlO3/SrTiO3 heterostructure slabs with three LaAlO3 overlayers lead to the emergence of interface conductivity. Calculated defect formation energies reveal strong preference of hydrogen dopant atoms for surface sites for all structures and concentrations considered. Strong decrease of the defect formation energy of hydrogen adatoms with increasing thickness of the LaAlO3 overlayer and crossover from positive to negative values, taken together with the metallic conductivity induced by hydrogen adatoms, seamlessly explains the semiconductor-metal transition observed for these heterostructures as a function of the overlayer thickness. Moreover, we show that the potential drop and concomitant shift of (layer resolved) band edges is suppressed for the metallic configuration. Finally, magnetism with stable local moments, which form atomically thin magnetic layers at the interface, is generated by oxygen vacancies either at the surface or the interface, or by hydrogen atoms buried at the interface. In particular, oxygen vacancies in the TiO2 interface layer cause drastic downshift of the 3d eg states of the Ti atoms neighboring the vacancies, giving rise to strongly localized magnetic moments, which add to the two-dimensional background magnetization. © 2019 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK.

According to recent experimental research, vanadium-carbide precipitates can improve hydrogen resistance and hardness in steels. In the present article, density functional theory calculations are performed to study the structure and energetics of iron–vanadium carbide interfaces and how hydrogen interacts with them. A comparison of the solubility of hydrogen in different sites shows that hydrogen will tend to segregate towards the iron–vanadium carbide interface and that carbon vacancies within a vanadium carbide precipitate behave as strong hydrogen traps. Additionally, it is shown that the presence of hydrogen at an iron–vanadium carbide interface does not cause a significant embrittlement of the material. © 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC

We study the isolated contribution of hole localization for well-known charge carrier recombination properties observed in conventional, polar InGaN quantum wells (QWs). This involves the interplay of charge carrier localization and non-radiative transitions, a non-exponential decay of the emission and a specific temperature dependence of the emission, denoted as “s-shape”. We investigate two dimensional In0.25Ga0.75N QWs of single monolayer (ML) thickness, stacked in a superlattice with GaN barriers of 6, 12, 25 and 50 MLs. Our results are based on scanning and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (STEM and HR-TEM), continuous-wave (CW) and time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) measurements as well as density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We show that the recombination processes in our structures are not affected by polarization fields and electron localization. Nevertheless, we observe all the aforementioned recombination properties typically found in standard polar InGaN quantum wells. Via decreasing the GaN barrier width to 6 MLs and below, the localization of holes in our QWs is strongly reduced. This enhances the influence of non-radiative recombination, resulting in a decreased lifetime of the emission, a weaker spectral dependence of the decay time and a reduced s-shape of the emission peak. These findings suggest that single exponential decay observed in non-polar QWs might be related to an increasing influence of non-radiative transitions. © 2019, The Author(s).

The performance of nanoporous carbons, used for hydrogen storage, ionic charge storage, or selective gas separation, is strongly determined by their pore shape and size distribution. Two frequently used experimental techniques to characterize the nanopore structure of carbons are gas adsorption combined with quenched-solid density functional theory and small angle X-ray scattering. However, neither of the two techniques can unambiguously derive a valid pore model for disordered pore structures without making assumptions. Here, we quantitatively compare pore size distributions from X-ray scattering and gas adsorption data. We generate three-dimensional pore models of activated carbons using small angle scattering and the concept of Gaussian Random Fields. These pore models are used to generate pore size distributions inherently containing a slit-pore assumption, making them comparable to pore size distributions obtained from gas adsorption analysis. This is realized by probing the effective adsorption potential via sampling of the three-dimensional pore structure with a probing adsorbate and calculating a “Degree of Confinement” parameter accounting for local pore geometry effects. We also generate pore size distributions with an alternative definition of pore size and discuss intricacies of gas adsorption results, such as the general tendency to underestimate the pore size dispersity in disordered microporous carbons. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Crystalline Co3O4 nanoparticles with a uniform size of 9 nm as shown by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were synthesized by thermal decomposition of cobalt acetylacetonate in oleylamine and applied in the oxidation of 2-propanol after calcination. The catalytic properties were derived under continuous flow conditions as a function of temperature up to 573 K in a fixed-bed reactor at atmospheric pressure. Temperature-programmed oxidation, desorption (TPD), surface reaction (TPSR), and 2-propanol decomposition experiments were performed to study the interaction of 2-propanol and O2 with the exposed spinel surfaces. Co3O4 selectively catalyzes the oxidative dehydrogenation of 2-propanol, yielding acetone and H2O and only to a minor extent the total oxidation to CO2 and H2O at higher temperatures. The high catalytic activity of Co3O4 reaching nearly full conversion with 100% selectivity to acetone at 430 K is attributed to the high amount of active Co3+ species at the catalyst surface as well as surface-bound reactive oxygen species observed in the O2 TPD, 2-propanol TPD, TPSR, and 2-propanol decomposition experiments. Density functional theory calculations with a Hubbard U term support the identification of the 5-fold-coordinated octahedral surface Co5c3+ as the active site, and oxidative dehydrogenation involving adsorbed atomic oxygen was found to be the energetically most favored pathway. The consumption of surface oxygen and reduction of Co3+ to Co2+ during 2-propanol oxidation derived from X-ray absorption spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements before and after reaction and poisoning by strongly bound carbonaceous species result in the loss of the low-temperature activity, while the high-temperature reaction pathway remained unaffected. © 2019 American Chemical Society.

Advances in renewable and sustainable energy technologies critically depend on our ability to design and realize materials with optimal properties. Materials discovery and design efforts ideally involve close coupling between materials prediction, synthesis and characterization. The increased use of computational tools, the generation of materials databases, and advances in experimental methods have substantially accelerated these activities. It is therefore an opportune time to consider future prospects for materials by design approaches. The purpose of this Roadmap is to present an overview of the current state of computational materials prediction, synthesis and characterization approaches, materials design needs for various technologies, and future challenges and opportunities that must be addressed. The various perspectives cover topics on computational techniques, validation, materials databases, materials informatics, high-throughput combinatorial methods, advanced characterization approaches, and materials design issues in thermoelectrics, photovoltaics, solid state lighting, catalysts, batteries, metal alloys, complex oxides and transparent conducting materials. It is our hope that this Roadmap will guide researchers and funding agencies in identifying new prospects for materials design. © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd.

A high density of grain boundaries can potentially increase structural materials' strength, but at the expense of losing the materials' strain hardening ability at high flow stress levels. However, endowing materials with grain size gradients and a high density of internal interfaces can simultaneously increase the strength and strain hardening ability. This applies particularly for through-thickness gradients of nanoscale interface structures. Here we apply a machining method that produces metals with nanoscale interface gradients. Conventional bulk plastic deformation such as rolling, a process applied annually to about 2 billion tons of material, aims to reduce the metal thickness. We have modified this process by introducing severe strain path changes, realized by leading the sheet through a U-turn while preserving its shape, an approach known as ‘hard turning’. We applied this process at both room temperature and 77 K to a NiCrCo medium entropy alloy. Micropillar compression was conducted to evaluate the mechanical response. After hard turning at room temperature, the surface microstructure obtained a ∼50% increase in yield stress (0.9 GPa) over the original state with homogeneous grain size (0.4 GPa), but the initial strain hardening rate did not show significant improvement. However, after hard turning at 77 k, the gradient nanolaminate structure tripled in yield stress and more than doubled its initial strain hardening rate. The improvements were achieved by introducing a specific microstructure that consists of gradient nanolaminates in the form of nanospaced twins and martensite in the face center cubic (fcc) phase. This microstructure was formed only at cryogenic temperature. It was found after turning at room temperature that only nanospaced twins were present in the fcc phase inside nanolaminates that had formed at the surface. The origin of the enhanced strain hardening mechanism was studied. Joint density functional theory (DFT) and axial next nearest neighbor Ising (ANNNI) models were used to explain the temperature-dependent phase formation of the NiCrCo nanolaminate at the surface of the hard-turned material. © 2019 Acta Materialia Inc.

We explore the effects of the elemental site occupancy in γ′-A3B (L12) intermetallic phases and their partitioning across the γ/γ′ interface in a class of multicomponent W-free Co-based superalloys. Atom probe tomography and first principles density functional theory calculations (DFT) were used to evaluate the Cr site occupancy behavior in the γ′ phase and its effect on the γ/γ′ partitioning behavior of other solutes in a series of Co-30Ni-10Al-5Mo-2Ta-2Ti-XCr alloys, where x is 0, 2, 5, and 8 at.% Cr, respectively. The increase in Cr content from 0 to 2 to 5 at.% leads to an inversion of the partitioning behavior of the solute Mo from the γ′ phase (KMo>1) into the γ matrix (KMo<1). At 5 at.% Cr, the Cr also has a preference to replace the excess anti-site Co atoms from the B-sites. At 8 at.% Cr, the Cr develops an additional preference to replace Co atoms from the A-sites. These compositional changes in the phases and the site partitioning behavior in the γ′ phase are accompanied by an overall decrease in the lattice misfit (δ) across the γ/γ′ interfaces as measured by high-resolution X-ray diffraction at room temperature. The reduction in misfit triggers a change in morphology of the γ′ phase from cuboidal (δ ∼ +0.48% at 0 at.% Cr) to round-cornered (δ ∼ +0.34% at 5 at.% Cr) to spheroidal shaped (δ ∼ +0.19% at 8 at.% Cr) precipitates. We also observed an increase in the solvus temperature from 1066 °C to 1105 °C when adding 5 at.% Cr to the alloy. These results on the effects of Cr in Co-base superalloys enable tuning the microstructure of these alloys and widening the alloy spectrum for designing improved high temperature alloys. © 2018 Acta Materialia Inc.

The Co-Ta system has been reviewed and the thermodynamic description was re-assessed in the present work. DFT (density functional theory) calculations considering spin polarization were performed to obtain the energies for all end-member configurations of the C14, C15, C36 and μ phases for the evaluation of the Gibbs energies of these phases. The phase diagram calculated with the present description agrees well with the experimental and theoretical data. Considering the DFT results was essential for giving a better description of the μ phase at lower temperatures. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Synthesis of elusive K4O6 has disclosed implications of crucial relevance for new solid materials discovery. K4O6 forms in equilibrium from K2O2 and KO2, in an all-solid state, endothermic reaction at elevated temperature, undergoing back reaction upon cooling to ambient conditions. This tells that the compound is stabilized by entropy alone. Analyzing possible entropic contributions reveals that the configurational entropy of “localized” electrons, i.e., of polaronic quasi-particles, provides the essential contribution to the stabilization. We corroborate this assumption by measuring the relevant heats of transformation and tracking the origin of entropy of formation computationally. These findings challenge current experimental and computational approaches towards exploring chemical systems for new materials by searching the potential energy landscape: one would fail in detecting candidates that are crucially stabilized by the configurational entropy of localized polarons. © 2019 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

In developing the next generation of Calphad databases, new models are used in which each term contributing to the Gibbs energy has a physical meaning. To continue the development, finite temperature density-functional-theory (DFT) results are used in the present work to discuss and suggest the most applicable and physically based model for Calphad assessments of solid phases above the melting point (the breakpoint for modeling the solid phase in previous assessments). These results are applied to investigate the properties of a solid in the superheated temperature region and to replace the melting temperature as the breakpoint with a more physically based temperature, i.e., where the superheated solid collapses into the liquid. The advantages and limitations of such an approach are presented in terms of a new assessment for unary aluminum. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Gold nanoparticles supported on reduced TiO2 (110) surfaces are widely used as catalysts for oxidation reactions. Despite extensive studies, the role of oxygen vacancies in such systems remains elusive and is controversially discussed. Combining ab initio molecular dynamics simulations with methods originally developed to describe defects in semiconductor physics we study how the electronic charge originally located at the vacancy modifies the charge on the cluster. Despite differences resulting from the employed level of density functional theory (namely semilocal/GGA, GGA + U, and hybrid functionals), we consistently find that the Au clusters remain either neutral or acquire a positive charge. The intuitively expected electron transfer from the oxygen vacancy to the gold cluster can be safely ruled out. Analyzing these findings, we discuss the role of the oxygen vacancy in the bonding between Au clusters and support and the catalytic activity of the system. © 2019 American Chemical Society.

Phonon measurements in the A15-type superconductors were complicated in the past because of the unavailability of large single crystals for inelastic neutron scattering, e.g., in the case of Nb3Sn, or unfavorable neutron scattering properties in the case of V3Si. Hence, only few studies of the lattice dynamical properties with momentum resolved methods were published, in particular below the superconducting transition temperature Tc. Here, we overcome these problems by employing inelastic x-ray scattering and report a combined experimental and theoretical investigation of lattice dynamics in V3Si with the focus on the temperature-dependent properties of low-energy acoustic phonon modes in several high-symmetry directions. We paid particular attention to the evolution of the soft phonon mode of the structural phase transition observed in our sample at Ts=18.9K, i.e., just above the measured superconducting phase transition at Tc=16.8K. Theoretically, we predict lattice dynamics including electron-phonon coupling based on density-functional-perturbation theory and discuss the relevance of the soft phonon mode with regard to the value of Tc. Furthermore, we explain superconductivity-induced anomalies in the lineshape of several acoustic phonon modes using a model proposed by Allen et al, [Phys. Rev. B 56, 5552 (1997)10.1103/PhysRevB.56.5552]. © 2019 American Physical Society.

Directly imaging all atoms constituting a material and, maybe more importantly, crystalline defects that dictate materials' properties, remains a formidable challenge. Here, we propose a new approach to chemistry-sensitive field-ion microscopy (FIM) combining FIM with time-of-flight mass-spectrometry (tof-ms). Elemental identification and correlation to FIM images enabled by data mining of combined tof-ms delivers a truly analytical-FIM (A-FIM). Contrast variations due to different chemistries is also interpreted from density-functional theory (DFT). A-FIM has true atomic resolution and we demonstrate how the technique can reveal the presence of individual solute atoms at specific positions in the microstructure. The performance of this new technique is showcased in revealing individual Re atoms at crystalline defects formed in Ni-Re binary alloy during creep deformation. The atomistic details offered by A-FIM allowed us to directly compare our results with simulations, and to tackle a long-standing question of how Re extends lifetime of Ni-based superalloys in service at high-temperature. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the Institute of Physics and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.

Unraveling the atomistic details of solid/liquid interfaces, e.g., by means of vibrational spectroscopy, is of vital importance in numerous applications, from electrochemistry to heterogeneous catalysis. Water-oxide interfaces represent a formidable challenge because a large variety of molecular and dissociated water species are present at the surface. Here, we present a comprehensive theoretical analysis of the anharmonic OH stretching vibrations at the water/ZnO(1010) interface as a prototypical case. Molecular dynamics simulations employing a reactive high-dimensional neural network potential based on density functional theory calculations have been used to sample the interfacial structures. In the second step, one-dimensional potential energy curves have been generated for a large number of configurations to solve the nuclear Schrödinger equation. We find that (i) the ZnO surface gives rise to OH frequency shifts up to a distance of about 4 Å from the surface; (ii) the spectrum contains a number of overlapping signals arising from different chemical species, with the frequencies decreasing in the order ν(adsorbed hydroxide) > ν(non-adsorbed water) > ν(surface hydroxide) > ν(adsorbed water); (iii) stretching frequencies are strongly influenced by the hydrogen bond pattern of these interfacial species. Finally, we have been able to identify substantial correlations between the stretching frequencies and hydrogen bond lengths for all species. © 2018 Author(s).

Grain boundaries (GBs) have a significant influence on material properties. In the present paper, we calculate the energies of eleven low-σ (σ > 13) symmetrical tilt GBs and two twist GBs in ferromagnetic bcc iron using firstprinciples density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The results demonstrate the importance of a sufficient sampling of initial rigid body translations in all three directions. We show that the relative GB energies can be xplained by the miscoordination of atoms at the GB region. While the main features of the studied GB structures were captured by previous empirical interatomic potential calculations, it is shown that the absolute values of GB energies calculated were substantially underestimated. Based on DFT-calculated GB structures and energies, we construct a new d-band orthogonal tight-binding (TB) model for bcc iron. The TB model is validated by its predictive power on all the studied GBs. We apply the TB model to block boundaries in lath martensite and demonstrate that the experimentally observed GB character distribution can be explained from the viewpoint of interface energy. © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd.

The adsorption of GLY-PRO-GLU tripeptide on Au(110) is investigated within the frame of all atom classical mechanics simulations and Density Functional Theory, focusing on the surface reconstruction. It is shown that the tripeptide adsorption reorganizes and restructures the Au(110) surface. A mechanism for the surface restructuration is proposed for both the neutral and zwitterionic form of the peptide at room temperature in Ultra High Vacuum. Diverse residues may be involved in the Au atoms displacement, and in particular glutamic acid, triggering a double proton transfer and the formation of a zwitter ionic state, is found to be responsible for the triggering of the surface reconstruction. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Nuclear quantum effects (NQEs) cause the nuclei of light elements like hydrogen to delocalize, affecting numerous properties of water and aqueous solutions, such as hydrogen-bonding and proton transfer barriers. Here, we address the prototypical case of aqueous NaOH solutions by investigating the effects of quantum nuclear fluctuations on radial distribution functions, hydrogen-bonding geometries, power spectra, proton transfer barriers, proton transfer rates, water self-exchange rates around the Na+ cations, and diffusion coefficients, for the full room-temperature solubility range. These properties were calculated from classical and ring-polymer molecular dynamics simulations employing a reactive high-dimensional neural network potential based on dispersion-corrected density functional theory reference calculations. We find that NQEs have a very small impact on the solvation structure around Na+, slightly strengthen the water-water and water-hydroxide hydrogen bonds, and lower the peak positions in the power spectra for the HOH bending and OH stretching modes by about 50 and 100 cm-1, respectively. Moreover, NQEs significantly lower the proton transfer barriers, thus increasing the proton transfer rates, resulting in an increase of the diffusion coefficient in particular of OH-, as well as a decrease of the mean residence time of molecules in the first hydration shell around Na+ at high NaOH concentrations. © 2018 American Chemical Society.

The impact of an electrochemical environment on the thermodynamic stability of polar oxide surfaces is investigated for the example of ZnO(0001) surfaces immersed in water using density functional theory calculations. We show that solvation effects are highly selective: They have little effect on surfaces showing a metallic character, but largely stabilize semiconducting structures, particularly those that have a high electrostatic penalty in vacuum. The high selectivity is shown to have direct consequences for the surface phase diagram and explains, e.g., why certain surface structures could be observed only in an electrochemical environment. © 2018 American Physical Society.

At the interface, the properties of water can be rather different from those observed in the bulk. In this chapter we present an overview of our computational approach to understand water structure and dynamics at the interface including atomistic and electronic structure details. In particular we show how Density Functional Theory-based molecular dynamics simulations (DFT-MD) of water interfaces can provide a microscopic interpretation of recent experimental results from surface sensitive vibrational Sum Frequency Generation spectroscopy (SFG). In our recent work we developed an expression for the calculation of the SFG spectra of water interfaces which is based on the projection of the atomic velocities on the local normal modes. Our approach permits to obtain the SFG signal from suitable velocity-velocity correlation functions, reducing the computational cost to that of the accumulation of a molecular dynamics trajectory, and therefore cutting the overhead costs associated to the explicit calculation of the dipole moment and polarizability tensor. Our method permits to interpret the peaks in the spectrum in terms of local modes, also including the bending region. The results for the water-air interface, obtained using extensive ab initio molecular dynamics simulations over 400 ns, are discussed in connection to recent phase resolved experimental data. © Springer International Publishing AG 2018.

Combining concepts of semiconductor physics and corrosion science, we develop a novel approach that allows us to perform ab initio calculations under controlled potentiostat conditions for electrochemical systems. The proposed approach can be straightforwardly applied in standard density functional theory codes. To demonstrate the performance and the opportunities opened by this approach, we study the chemical reactions that take place during initial corrosion at the water-Mg interface under anodic polarization. Based on this insight, we derive an atomistic model that explains the origin of the anodic hydrogen evolution. © 2018 American Physical Society.

Correlative scanning transmission electron microscopy, atom probe tomography, and density functional theory calculations resolve the correlation between elastic strain fields and local impurity concentrations on the atomic scale. The correlative approach is applied to coherent interfaces in a κ-carbide strengthened low-density steel and establishes a tetragonal distortion of fcc-Fe. An interfacial roughness of ∼1nm and a localized carbon concentration gradient extending over ∼2-3nm is revealed, which originates from the mechano-chemical coupling between local strain and composition. © 2018 American Physical Society.

In fracture mechanics, established methods exist to model the stability of a crack tip or the kinetics of crack growth on both the atomic and the macroscopic scale. However, approaches to bridge the two scales still face the challenge in terms of directly converting the atomic forces at which bonds break into meaningful continuum mechanical failure stresses. Here we use two atomistic methods to investigate cleavage fracture of brittle materials: (i) we analyze the forces in front of a sharp crack and (ii) we study the bond breaking process during rigid body separation of half crystals without elastic relaxation. The comparison demonstrates the ability of the latter scheme, which is often used in ab initio density functional theory calculations, to model the bonding situation at a crack tip. Furthermore, we confirm the applicability of linear elastic fracture mechanics in the nanometer range close to crack tips in brittle materials. Based on these observations, a fracture mechanics model is developed to scale the critical atomic forces for bond breaking into relevant continuum mechanical quantities in the form of an atomistically informed scale-sensitive traction separation law. Such failure criteria can then be applied to describe fracture processes on larger length scales, e.g., in cohesive zone models or extended finite element models. Copyright © Materials Research Society 2018 This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (.

In Cu-zeolite based selective catalytic reduction of NOx with NH3 (NH3-SCR), Cu species (in particular CuI) solvated by NH3 molecules are predicted theoretically to be highly mobile with their mobility being decisive for the NH3-SCR reactivity at low temperatures (<250 °C). Direct experimental observation of the Cu mobility after NH3 solvation, however, has not been achieved yet. Here we show that complex impedance-based modulus spectroscopy, performed by following the corresponding dielectric relaxation processes at high frequencies (104 to 106 Hz), can be applied to monitor directly the dynamic local movement of Cu ions in zeolite catalysts under NH3-SCR related reaction conditions. Simultaneous in situ impedance and infrared spectroscopy studies, assisted by periodic DFT calculations with reliable van der Waals dispersion corrections, allowed us to identify the key factors determining the local dynamics of Cu ions in two representative Cu-zeolites, i.e. Cu-ZSM-5 and Cu-SAPO-34. The co-adsorption and interaction of NO and NH3 on CuII sites led to the formation of highly mobile CuI species and NH4+ intermediates, and, consequently, significantly enhanced local dynamics of Cu ions in both zeolite catalysts. The re-oxidation of CuI, which is the rate-determining step of NH3-SCR reaction, was more favorable in Cu-SAPO-34 than in Cu-ZSM-5, which can be attributed to the close coupling of NH4+ intermediate and Cu site promoting the formation of CuII-NO2/NH4+. As a result, the overall local dynamics of Cu, largely determined by CuI species, is less dependent on the NH4+ intermediate in Cu-SAPO-34 than in Cu-ZSM-5. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Metastable Cu-Cr alloy thin films with nominal thickness of 300nm and composition of Cu67Cr33 (at%) are obtained by co-evaporation using molecular beam epitaxy. The microstructure, chemical phase separation and electronic structure are investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The thin film adopts the body-centered cubic crystal structure and consists of columnar grains with ~50nm diameter. Aberration-corrected scanning TEM in combination with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy confirms compositional fluctuations within the grains. Cu- and Cr-rich domains with composition of Cu85Cr15 (at%) and Cu42Cr58 (at%) and domain size of 1-5nm are observed. The alignment of the interface between the Cu- and Cr-rich domains shows a preference for (110)-type habit plane. The electronic structure of the Cu-Cr thin films is investigated by electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and is contrasted to an fcc-Cu reference sample. The experimental EEL spectra are compared to spectra computed by density functional theory. The main differences between bcc-and fcc-Cu are related to differences in van Hove singularities in the electron density of states. In Cu-Cr solid solutions with bcc crystal structure a single peak after the L3-edge, corresponding to a van Hove singularity at the N-point of the first Brillouin zone is observed. Spectra computed for pure bcc-Cu and random Cu-Cr solid solutions with 10at% Cr confirm the experimental observations. The calculated spectrum for a perfect Cu50Cr50 (at%) random structure shows a shift in the van Hove singularity towards higher energy by developing a Cu-Cr d-band that lies between the delocalized d-bands of Cu and Cr. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Synthetic pentlandite (Fe4.5Ni4.5S8) is a promising electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution, demonstrating high current densities, low overpotential, and remarkable stability in bulk form. The depletion of sulfur from the surface of this catalyst during the electrochemical reaction has been proposed to be beneficial for its catalytic performance, but the role of sulfur vacancies and the mechanism determining the reaction kinetics are still unknown. We have performed electrochemical operando studies of the vibrational dynamics of pentlandite under hydrogen evolution reaction conditions using 57Fe nuclear resonant inelastic X-ray scattering. Comparing the measured Fe partial vibrational density of states with density functional theory calculations, we have demonstrated that hydrogen atoms preferentially occupy substitutional positions replacing pre-existing sulfur vacancies. Once all vacancies are filled, the protonation proceeds interstitially, which slows down the reaction. Our results highlight the beneficial role of sulfur vacancies in the electrocatalytic performance of pentlandite and give insights into the hydrogen adsorption mechanism during the reaction. © 2017 American Chemical Society.

Correlatively employing density functional theory and experiments congregated around high power pulsed magnetron sputtering, a plasma-surface model for metastable Cr0.8Al0.2N (space group Fm 3 m) is developed. This plasma-surface model relates plasma energetics with film composition, crystal structure, mass density, stress state, and elastic properties. It is predicted that N Frenkel pairs form during Cr0.8Al0.2N growth due to high-energy ion irradiation, yielding a mass density of 5.69 g cm-3 at room temperature and Young's modulus of 358-130 GPa in the temperature range of 50-700 K for the stress-free state and about 150 GPa larger values for the compressive stress of 4 GPa. Our measurements are consistent with the quantum mechanical predictions within 5% for the mass density and 3% for Young's modulus. The hypothesis of a stress-induced Young's modulus change may at least in part explain the spread in the reported elasticity data ranging from 250 to 420 GPa. © 2017 Author(s).

Synthetic diiron compounds of the general formula Fe2(μ-S2R)(CO)n(L)6-n (R = alkyl or aromatic groups; L = CN- or phosphines) are versatile models for the active-site cofactor of hydrogen turnover in [FeFe]-hydrogenases. A series of 18 diiron compounds, containing mostly a dithiolate bridge and terminal ligands of increasing complexity, was characterized by X-ray absorption and emission spectroscopy in combination with density functional theory. Fe K-edge absorption and Kβ main-line emission spectra revealed the varying geometry and the low-spin state of the Fe(i) centers. Good agreement between experimental and calculated core-to-valence-excitation absorption and radiative valence-to-core-decay emission spectra revealed correlations between spectroscopic and structural features and provided access to the electronic configuration. Four main effects on the diiron core were identified, which were preferentially related to variation either of the dithiolate or of the terminal ligands. Alteration of the dithiolate bridge affected mainly the Fe-Fe bond strength, while more potent donor substitution and ligand field asymmetrization changed the metal charge and valence level localization. In contrast, cyanide ligation altered all relevant properties and, in particular, the frontier molecular orbital energies of the diiron core. Mutual benchmarking of experimental and theoretical parameters provides guidelines to verify the electronic properties of related diiron compounds. © 2017 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

The formation of a ternary μ-phase is documented for the system Co-Ti-W. The relevant compositional stability range is identified by high-throughput energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, electrical resistance and X-ray diffraction maps from a thin-film materials library (1 μm thickness). Bulk samples of the identified compositions were fabricated to allow for correlative film and bulk studies. Using analytical scanning and transmission electron microscopy, we demonstrate that in both, thin film and bulk samples, the D85 phase (μ-phase) coexists with the C36-phase and the A2-phase at comparable average chemical compositions. Young's moduli and hardness values of the μ-phase and the C36-phase were determined by nanoindentation. The trends of experimentally obtained elastic moduli are consistent with density functional theory (DFT) calculations. DFT analysis also supports the experimental findings, that the μ-phase can solve up to 18 at.% Ti. Based on the experimental and DFT results it is shown that CALPHAD modeling can be modified to account for the new findings. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

Solid-liquid interfaces play an important role in many fields like electrochemistry, corrosion, and heterogeneous catalysis. For understanding the related processes, detailed insights into the elementary steps at the atomic level are mandatory. Here we unravel the properties of prototypical surface-defects like adatoms and vacancies at a number of copper-water interfaces including the low-index Cu(111), Cu(100), and Cu(110), as well as the stepped Cu(211) and Cu(311) surfaces. Using a first-principles quality neural network potential constructed from density functional theory reference data in combination with molecular dynamics and metadynamics simulations, we investigate the defect diffusion mechanisms and the associated free energy barriers. Further, the solvent structure and the mobility of the interfacial water molecules close to the defects are analyzed and compared to the defect-free surfaces. We find that, like at the copper-vacuum interface, hopping mechanisms are preferred compared to exchange mechanisms, while the associated barriers for hopping are reduced in the presence of liquid water. The water structure close to adatoms and vacancies exhibits pronounced local features and differs strongly from the structure at the ideal low-index surfaces. Moreover, in particular at Cu(111) the adatoms are very mobile and hopping events along the surface are more frequent than the exchange of coordinating water molecules in their local environment. Consequently, adatom self-diffusion processes at Cu(111) involve entities of adatoms and their associated solvation shells. © 2017 American Chemical Society.

Understanding the deactivation of transition-metal carbide catalysts during hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) reactions is of great importance for improving the production of the second generation fuels from biomass. Based on a combined experimental and theoretical study, we present a mechanistic model for the deactivation of molybdenum carbide catalysts during phenol HDO in the presence of water. At increased water pressure, water molecules preferentially bind to the surface, and active sites are no longer accessible for phenol. In line with first principle calculations, experiments reveal that this process is fully reversible because the reduction of the water partial pressure results in a threefold increase in conversion. The direct deoxygenation of phenol was calculated to be the most favorable pathway, which is governed by the structure of the phenol adsorption complex on the surface at high hydrogen coverage. This is consistent with the experimentally observed high benzene selectivity (85 %) for phenol HDO over MoCx/HCS (hollow carbon spheres) catalyst. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

In the search for high energy density battery materials, over-lithiated transition metal oxides have attracted the attention of many researchers worldwide. There is, however, no consensus regarding the underlying mechanisms that give rise to the large capacities and also cause the electrochemical degradation upon cycling. As a key component and prototype phase, Li2MnO3 is investigated using density functional theory. Our calculations show that hole doping into the oxygen bands is the primary charge compensation mechanism in the first stage of delithiation. Upon further delithiation, there is an energetic driving force for peroxide formation with an optimal number of peroxide dimers that is predicted as a function of lithium concentration. Unlike the defect-free phases, the peroxide structures are highly stable, which leads to two competing mechanisms for charge compensation: (i) oxygen loss and densification at the surface and (ii) peroxide formation in the bulk. Our results show that both have a detrimental effect on the electrochemical performance and therefore the stabilization of oxygen in the crystal lattice is vital for the development of high energy cathode materials. The insights into the origin and implications of peroxide formation open the door for a more profound understanding of the degradation mechanism and how to counteract it. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2017.

Knowledge of the thermodynamic and structural properties of iron carbide and nitride phases is crucial for understanding phase transformations and related microstructure formation in steels. While the existence and crystal structure of the primitive cubic fcc-based γ′-Fe4N1-z phase is experimentally well-established, there is no consensus in contemporary literature about an analogous γ′-Fe4C compound. Here, we present DFT calculations for all fcc-like Fe4C and Fe4N superstructures with up to two formula units per primitive unit cell, providing energy values and the relaxed atomic structures, which were analysed mathematically and by visual inspection of the atomic arrangement. Notably, all considered Fe4C and Fe4N superstructures are metastable with respect to α-Fe and cementite-Fe3C/ε-Fe3N. Unsurprisingly, we find the well-known γ′ compound's crystal structure to be most favourable among these metastable Fe4N superstructures. However, we find the equivalent superstructure to be quite unfavourable in Fe4C. The most favourable among these metastable Fe4C structures are stabilised by a partial Bain-like distortion into the direction of a body-centred cubic arrangement of Fe atoms. This makes the particular C-ordering interesting for comparison with the short-range order in Fe-C martensites. However, even the lowest-energy Fe4C structure releases about 0.056 eV/atom upon decomposition into α + Fe3C, much more than it is the case for Fe4N (0.019 eV/atom). That energy difference is difficult to overcome even at T > 0 K, in agreement with the lack of clear experimental evidence for existence of a Fe4C phase. © 2017 Acta Materialia Inc.

The elastic properties of crystalline metals scale with their valence electron density. Similar observations have been made for metallic glasses. However, for metallic glasses where covalent bonding predominates, such as metalloid metallic glasses, this relationship appears to break down. At present, the reasons for this are not understood. Using high energy x-ray diffraction analysis of melt spun and thin film metallic glasses combined with density functional theory based molecular dynamics simulations, we show that the physical origin of the ultrahigh stiffness in both metalloid and non-metalloid metallic glasses is best understood in terms of the bond energy density. Using the bond energy density as novel materials design criterion for ultra-stiff metallic glasses, we are able to predict a Co33.0Ta3.5B63.5 short range ordered material by density functional theory based molecular dynamics simulations with a high bond energy density of 0.94 eV Å-3 and a bulk modulus of 263 GPa, which is 17% greater than the stiffest Co-B based metallic glasses reported in literature. © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd.

By doping the TiO2 support with nitrogen, strong metal-support interactions (SMSI) in Pd/TiO2 catalysts can be tailored to obtain high-performance supported Pd nanoparticles (NPs) in nitrobenzene (NB) hydrogenation catalysis. According to the comparative studies by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and diffuse reflectance CO FTIR (CO-DRIFTS), N-doping induced a structural promoting effect, which is beneficial for the dispersion of Pd species on TiO2. High-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy study of Pd on N-doped TiO2 confirmed a predominant presence of sub-2 nm Pd NPs, which are stable under the applied hydrogenation conditions. XPS and CO-DRIFTS revealed the formation of strongly coupled Pd-N species in Pd/TiO2 with N-doped TiO2 as support. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations over model systems with Pdn (n = 1, 5, or 10) clusters deposited on TiO2(101) surface were performed to verify and supplement the experimental observations. In hydrogenation catalysis using NB as a model molecule, Pd NPs on N-doped TiO2 outperformed those on N-free TiO2 in terms of both catalytic activity and stability, which can be attributed to the presence of highly dispersed Pd NPs providing more active sites, and to the formation of Pd-N species favoring the dissociative adsorption of the reactant NB and the easier desorption of the product aniline. (Figure Presented). © 2016 American Chemical Society.

Reliable and predictive relationships between fundamental microstructural material properties and observable macroscopic mechanical behaviour are needed for the successful design of new materials. In this study we establish a link between physical properties that are defined on the atomic level and the deformation mechanisms of slip planes and interfaces that govern the mechanical behaviour of a metallic material. To accomplish this, the shear instability energy Γ is introduced, which can be determined via quantum mechanical ab initio calculations or other atomistic methods. The concept is based on a multilayer generalised stacking fault energy calculation and can be applied to distinguish the different shear deformation mechanisms occurring at TiAl interfaces during finite-temperature molecular dynamics simulations. We use the new parameter Γ to construct a deformation mechanism map for different interfaces occurring in this intermetallic. Furthermore, Γ can be used to convert the results of ab initio density functional theory calculations into those obtained with an embedded atom method type potential for TiAl. We propose to include this new physical parameter into material databases to apply it for the design of materials and microstructures, which so far mainly relies on single-crystal values for the unstable and stable stacking fault energy. © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Modern simulation techniques have reached a level of maturity which allows a wide range of problems in chemistry and materials science to be addressed. Unfortunately, the application of first principles methods with predictive power is still limited to rather small systems, and despite the rapid evolution of computer hardware no fundamental change in this situation can be expected. Consequently, the development of more efficient but equally reliable atomistic potentials to reach an atomic level understanding of complex systems has received considerable attention in recent years. A promising new development has been the introduction of machine learning (ML) methods to describe the atomic interactions. Once trained with electronic structure data, ML potentials can accelerate computer simulations by several orders of magnitude, while preserving quantum mechanical accuracy. This Review considers the methodology of an important class of ML potentials that employs artificial neural networks. © 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

A series of ZnO/Cr2O3 catalysts with different Zn:Cr ratios was prepared by coprecipitation at a constant pH of 7 and applied in methanol synthesis at 260-300 °C and 60 bar. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) results showed that the calcined catalysts with ratios from 65:35 to 55:45 consist of ZnCr2O4 spinel with a low degree of crystallinity. For catalysts with Zn:Cr ratios smaller than 1, the formation of chromates was observed in agreement with temperature-programmed reduction results. Raman and XRD results did not provide evidence for the presence of segregated ZnO, indicating the existence of Zn-rich nonstoichiometric Zn-Cr spinel in the calcined catalyst. The catalyst with Zn:Cr = 65:35 exhibits the best performance in methanol synthesis. The Zn:Cr ratio of this catalyst corresponds to that of the Zn4Cr2(OH)12CO3 precursor with hydrotalcite-like structure obtained by coprecipitation, which is converted during calcination into a nonstoichiometric Zn-Cr spinel with an optimum amount of oxygen vacancies resulting in high activity in methanol synthesis. Density functional theory calculations are used to examine the formation of oxygen vacancies and to measure the reducibility of the methanol synthesis catalysts. Doping Cr into bulk and the (10-10) surface of ZnO does not enhance the reducibility of ZnO, confirming that Cr:ZnO cannot be the active phase. The (100) surface of the ZnCr2O4 spinel has a favorable oxygen vacancy formation energy of 1.58 eV. Doping this surface with excess Zn charge-balanced by oxygen vacancies to give a 60% Zn content yields a catalyst composed of an amorphous ZnO layer supported on the spinel with high reducibility, confirming this as the active phase for the methanol synthesis catalyst. © 2017 American Chemical Society.

We discuss the modelling of grain boundary dynamics within an amplitude equations description, which is derived from classical density functional theory or the phase field crystal model. The relation between the conditions for periodicity of the system and coincidence site lattices at grain boundaries is investigated. Within the amplitude equations framework, we recover predictions of the geometrical model by Cahn and Taylor for coupled grain boundary motion, and find both (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) coupling. No spontaneous transition between these modes occurs due to restrictions related to the rotational invariance of the amplitude equations. Grain rotation due to coupled motion is also in agreement with theoretical predictions. Whereas linear elasticity is correctly captured by the amplitude equations model, open questions remain for the case of nonlinear deformations. © 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

The dissociation of water is an important step in many chemical processes at solid surfaces. In particular, water often spontaneously dissociates near metal oxide surfaces, resulting in a mixture of H2O, H+, and OH- at the interface. Ubiquitous proton-transfer (PT) reactions cause these species to dynamically interconvert, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, we develop and use a reactive high-dimensional neural-network potential based on density functional theory data to elucidate the structural and dynamical properties of the interfacial species at the liquid-water-metal-oxide interface, using the nonpolar ZnO(101̅0) surface as a prototypical case. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that water dissociation and recombination proceed via two types of PT reactions: (i) to and from surface oxide and hydroxide anions (“surface-PT”) and (ii) to and from neighboring adsorbed hydroxide ions and water molecules (“adlayer-PT”). We find that the adlayer-PT rate is significantly higher than the surface-PT rate. Water dissociation is, for both types of PT, governed by a predominant presolvation mechanism, i.e., thermal fluctuations that cause the adsorbed water molecules to occasionally accept a hydrogen bond, resulting in a decreased PT barrier and an increased dissociation rate as compared to when no hydrogen bond is present. Consequently, we are able to show that hydrogen bond fluctuations govern PT events at the water-metal-oxide interface in a way similar to that in acidic and basic aqueous bulk solutions. © 2017 American Chemical Society.

We report the growth, structure and characterization of BaZnGa, identifying it as the sole known ternary compound in the Ba–Zn–Ga system. Single crystals of BaZnGa can be grown out of excess Ba–Zn and adopt a tI36 structure type. There are three unique Ba sites and three M = Zn/Ga sites. Using DFT calculations we can argue that whereas one of these three M sites is probably solely occupied by Ga, the other two M sites, most likely, have mixed Zn/Ga occupancy. Temperature-dependent resistivity and magnetization measurements suggest that BaZnGa is a poor metal with no electronic or magnetic phase transitions between 1.8 and 300 K. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Nanophase segregation of a bicomponent thiol self-assembled monolayer is predicted using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations and experimentally confirmed. The simulations suggest the formation of domains rich in acid-terminated chains, on one hand, and of domains rich in amide-functionalized ethylene glycol oligomers, on the other hand. In particular, within the amide-ethylene glycol oligomers region, a key role is played by the formation of interchain hydrogen bonds. The predicted phase segregation is experimentally confirmed by the synthesis of 35 and 15 nm gold nanoparticles functionalized with several binary mixtures of ligands. An extensive study by transmission electron microscopy and electron tomography, using silica selective heterogeneous nucleation on acid-rich domains to provide electron contrast, supports simulations and highlights patchy nanoparticles with a trend toward Janus nano-objects depending on the nature of the ligands and the particle size. These results validate our computational platform as an effective tool to predict nanophase separation in organic mixtures on a surface and drive further exploration of advanced nanoparticle functionalization. © 2017 American Chemical Society.

[FeFe]-Hydrogenases contain a H2-converting cofactor (H-cluster) in which a canonical [4Fe-4S] cluster is linked to a unique diiron site with three carbon monoxide (CO) and two cyanide (CN-) ligands (e.g., in the oxidized state, Hox). There has been much debate whether reduction and hydrogen binding may result in alternative rotamer structures of the diiron site in a single (Hred) or double (Hsred) reduced H-cluster species. We employed infrared spectro-electrochemistry and site-selective isotope editing to monitor the CO/CN- stretching vibrations in [FeFe]-hydrogenase HYDA1 from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Density functional theory calculations yielded vibrational modes of the diatomic ligands for conceivable H-cluster structures. Correlation analysis of experimental and computational IR spectra has facilitated an assignment of Hred and Hsred to structures with a bridging hydride at the diiron site. Pronounced ligand rotation during μH binding seems to exclude Hred and Hsred as catalytic intermediates. Only states with a conservative H-cluster geometry featuring a μCO ligand are likely involved in rapid H2 turnover. © 2017 American Chemical Society.

We report on the investigation of the off-stoichiometry and site-occupancy of κ-carbide precipitates within an austenitic (γ), Fe-29.8Mn-7.7Al-1.3C (wt.%) alloy using a combination of atom probe tomography and density functional theory. The chemical composition of the κ-carbides as measured by atom probe tomography indicates depletion of both interstitial C and substitutional Al, in comparison to the ideal stoichiometric L′12 bulk perovskite. In this work we demonstrate that both these effects are coupled. The off-stoichiometric concentration of Al can, to a certain extent, be explained by strain caused by the κ/γ mismatch, which facilitates occupation of Al sites in κ-carbide by Mn atoms (Mnγ Al anti-site defects). The large anti-site concentrations observed by our experiments, however, can only be stabilized if there are C vacancies in the vicinity of the anti-site. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

We use high resolution angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy and density functional theory with measured crystal structure parameters to study the electronic properties of CaKFe4As4. In contrast to the related CaFe2As2 compounds, CaKFe4As4 has a high Tc of 35 K at stochiometric composition. This presents a unique opportunity to study the properties of high temperature superconductivity in the iron arsenides in the absence of doping or substitution. The Fermi surface consists of several hole and electron pockets that have a range of diameters. We find that the values of the superconducting gap are nearly isotropic (within the explored portions of the Brillouin zone), but are significantly different for each of the Fermi surface (FS) sheets. Most importantly, we find that the momentum dependence of the gap magnitude plotted across the entire Brillouin zone displays a strong deviation from the simple cos(kx)cos(ky) functional form of the gap function, proposed by the scenario of Cooper pairing driven by a short range antiferromagnetic exchange interaction. Instead, the maximum value of the gap is observed on FS sheets that are closest to the ideal nesting condition, in contrast to previous observations in other ferropnictides. These results provide strong support for the multiband character of superconductivity in CaKFe4As4, in which Cooper pairing forms on the electron and the hole bands interacting via a dominant interband repulsive interaction, enhanced by band nesting. © 2016 American Physical Society.

Accurate MOF-FF parameter sets were determined for the ferrous and ferric forms of an iron-based metal-organic framework (MOF) called Fe-MOF-74. For this purpose, density functional theory (DFT) calculations were applied to truncated cluster models of Fe-MOF-74, and the DFT-calculated geometries and energy derivatives were used for the force-field parameterization. The resultant parameter sets performed remarkably well in reproducing the experimentally determined structure of the MOF. We also performed periodic quantum mechanics (QM) / molecular mechanics (MM) calculations employing a subtractive scheme called ONIOM, with the optimized MOF-FF parameters used for the MM calculations, in an attempt to evaluate the binding energies between O2 and several Fe-MOF-74 variants. The calculated binding energy for Fe-MOF-74 agreed very well with the experimental value, and QM/MM geometry optimization calculations confirmed that the O2-bound complex has a side-on geometry. Our calculations also predicted that, when the two neighboring iron ions around the O2-binding site are replaced with other metal ions (Mg2+, Ni2+, Zn2+, Co2+, or Mn2+), there are noticeable variations in the binding energy, indicating that these substituted metal ions affect the O2 binding indirectly. © 2016 Published by NRC Research Press.

We present a three-dimensional structure-map based on experimental data for compounds that contain sp-block elements and transition metals. The map predicts the correct crystal structure with a probability of 86% and has a confidence of better than 98% that the correct crystal structure is among three predicted crystal structures. The three descriptors of the structure map are physically intuitive functions of the number of valence electrons, atomic volume, and electronegativity of the constituent elements. We test the structure map against standard density-functional theory calculations for 1:1 sp-d-valent compounds and show that our three-parameter model has a comparable predictive power. We demonstrate the application of the structure map in conjunction with density-functional theory calculations. © 2016 American Chemical Society.

The precise description of quantum nuclear fluctuations in atomistic modelling is possible by employing path integral techniques, which involve a considerable computational overhead due to the need of simulating multiple replicas of the system. Many approaches have been suggested to reduce the required number of replicas. Among these, high-order factorizations of the Boltzmann operator are particularly attractive for high-precision and low-temperature scenarios. Unfortunately, to date, several technical challenges have prevented a widespread use of these approaches to study the nuclear quantum effects in condensed-phase systems. Here we introduce an inexpensive molecular dynamics scheme that overcomes these limitations, thus making it possible to exploit the improved convergence of high-order path integrals without having to sacrifice the stability, convenience, and flexibility of conventional second-order techniques. The capabilities of the method are demonstrated by simulations of liquid water and ice, as described by a neural-network potential fitted to the dispersion-corrected hybrid density functional theory calculations. © 2016 Author(s).

The study of the adsorption phenomenon of helium began many decades ago with the discovery of graphite as a homogeneous substrate for the investigation of physically adsorbed monolayer films. In particular, helium monoatomic layers on graphite were found to exhibit a very rich phase diagram. In the present work we have investigated the adsorption phenomenon of helium atoms on graphene and silicene substrates by means of density functional theory with Born–Oppenheimer approximation. Helium–substrate and helium–helium interactions were considered from first principles. Vibrational properties of adsorbed monolayers have been used to explore the stability of the system. This approach reproduces results describing the stability of a helium monolayer on graphene calculated by quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations for low and high coverage cases. However, for the moderate coverage value there is a discrepancy with QMC results due to the lack of helium zero point motion. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

In bond-order potentials (BOPs) for transition metals only the bonding mediated by the d electrons is included explicitly and the covalent part of the cohesive energy is evaluated using Slater-Koster dd bond integrals. However, the effect of s electrons with orbitals centered on atoms neighboring the corresponding dd bond is not necessarily negligible. As shown in Nguyen-Manh et al (2000 Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 4136) this can be taken into account via screening of the dd bond integrals. In a recent paper (Lin et al 2014 Model. Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng. 22 034002) the dd bond integrals were determined using a projection scheme utilizing atomic orbitals that give the best representation of the electronic wave functions in the calculations based on the density functional theory (DFT) (Madsen et al 2011 Phys. Rev. B 83 4119) and it was inferred that in this case the effect of s electrons was already included. In this paper we analyze this hypothesis by comparing studies employing BOPs with both unscreened and screened dd bond integrals. In all cases results are compared with calculations based on DFT and/or experiments. Studies of structures alternate to the bcc lattice, transformation paths that connect the bcc structure with fcc, simple cubic (sc), body centered tetragonal (bct) and hcp structures via continuously distorted configurations and calculations of γ-surfaces were all found to be insensitive to the screening of bond integrals. On the other hand, when the bond integrals are screened, formation energies of vacancies are improved and calculated phonon dispersion spectra reproduce the experimentally observed ones much better. Most importantly, dislocation core structure and dislocation glide are significantly different without and with screening of dd bond integrals. The latter lead to a much better agreement with available experiments. These findings suggest that the effect of s electrons on dd bonds, emulated by the screening of corresponding bond integrals, is the least significant when the lattice is distorted away from the ideal bcc structure homogeneously even if such distortion is large. On the other hand, when the distortion is local and inhomogeneous the impact of screening of the dd bond integrals is significant. In the studies presented in this paper such local inhomogeneities occur when phonons propagate through the lattice, at point defects and in the cores of dislocations. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.

A multiscale simulation approach based on atomistic calculations and a discrete diffusion model is developed and applied to carbon-supersaturated ferrite, as experimentally observed in severely deformed pearlitic steel. We employ the embedded atom method and the nudged elastic band technique to determine the energetic profile of a carbon atom around a screw dislocation in bcc iron. The results clearly indicate a special region in the proximity of the dislocation core where C atoms are strongly bound, but where they can nevertheless diffuse easily due to low barriers. Our analysis suggests that the previously proposed pipe mechanism for the case of a screw dislocation is unlikely. Instead, our atomistic as well as the diffusion model results support the so-called drag mechanism, by which a mobile screw dislocation is able to transport C atoms along its glide plane. Combining the C-dislocation interaction energies with density-functional-theory calculations of the strain dependent C formation energy allows us to investigate the C supersaturation of the ferrite phase under wire drawing conditions. Corresponding results for local and total C concentrations agree well with previous atom probe tomography measurements indicating that a significant contribution to the supersaturation during wire drawing is due to dislocations. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

In this study we propose a unified multi-scale chemo-mechanical description of the BCT (Body-Centered Tetragonal) to BCC (Body-Centered Cubic) order-disorder transition in martensitic steel by adding the mechanical degrees of freedom to the standard CALPHAD (CALculation of PHAse Diagrams) type Gibbs energy description. The model takes into account external strain, the effect of carbon composition on the lattice parameter and elastic moduli. The carbon composition effect on the lattice parameters and elastic constants is described by a sublattice model with properties obtained from DFT (Density Functional Theory) calculations; the temperature dependence of the elasticity parameters is estimated from available experimental data. This formalism is crucial for studying the kinetics of martensite tempering in realistic microstructures. The obtained extended Gibbs energy description opens the way to phase-field simulations of tempering of martensitic steel comprising microstructure evolution, carbon diffusion and lattice symmetry change due to the ordering/disordering of carbon atoms under multiaxial load. © 2016 by the authors.

We have computed formation energies for all technologically relevant transition metal solutes in the α, β, and ω phases of Ti, employing ab initio simulations. We analyze and explain their periodic-table trends, and from their differences we derive stabilization energies which provide direct insight into phase stabilization effects of the various solutes with respect to α, β, and ω. This allows us to identify strong β stabilizers in the middle of each electronic d shell in consistency with experimental knowledge. Based on an extension of the stabilization energies to free energies we derive a wide range of Ti-transition metal phase diagrams. A detailed comparison to available experimental martensitic transformation temperatures and to measurements performed in this study shows that, despite some quantitative discrepancies, the qualitative trends can be expected to be correct. An important feature that is displayed by a limited range of the computed phase diagrams is a triple point at which the three phases, α, β, and ω, meet. This insight provides a plausible explanation for the complexity observed in gum metals, a class of Ti alloys with very special materials properties. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

Proton transfer processes play an important role in many fields of chemistry. In dilute basic aqueous solutions, proton transfer from water molecules to hydroxide ions is aided by "presolvation", i.e., thermal fluctuations that modify the hydrogen-bonding environment around the proton-receiving OH- ion to become more similar to that of a neutral H2O molecule. In particular at high concentrations, however, the underlying mechanisms and especially the role of the counterions are little understood. As a prototypical case, we investigate aqueous NaOH solutions using molecular dynamics simulations employing a reactive high-dimensional neural-network potential constructed from density functional theory reference data. We find that with increasing concentration the predominant proton transfer mechanism changes from being "acceptor-driven", i.e., governed by the presolvation of OH-, to "donor-driven", i.e., governed by the presolvation of H2O, and back to acceptor-driven near the room-temperature solubility limit of 19 mol/L, which corresponds to an extremely solvent-deficient system containing only about one H2O molecule per ion. Specifically, we identify concentration ranges where the proton transfer rate is mostly affected by OH- losing an accepted hydrogen bond, OH- forming a donated hydrogen bond, H2O forming an accepted hydrogen bond, or H2O losing a coordinated Na+. Presolvation also manifests itself in the shortening of the Na+-OH2 distances, in that the Na+ "pushes" one of the H2O protons away. © 2016 American Chemical Society.

We present a comprehensive study of the low-temperature heat capacity and thermal expansion of single crystals of the hole-doped Ba1-xKxFe2As2 series (0

Although the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is one of the fastest electrocatalytic reactions, modern polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolysers require larger platinum loadings (∼0.5-1.0 mg cm-2) than those in PEM fuel cell anodes and cathodes altogether (∼0.5 mg cm-2). Thus, catalyst optimization would help in substantially reducing the costs for hydrogen production using this technology. Here we show that the activity of platinum(111) electrodes towards HER is significantly enhanced with just monolayer amounts of copper. Positioning copper atoms into the subsurface layer of platinum weakens the surface binding of adsorbed H-intermediates and provides a twofold activity increase, surpassing the highest specific HER activities reported for acidic media under similar conditions, to the best of our knowledge. These improvements are rationalized using a simple model based on structure-sensitive hydrogen adsorption at platinum and copper-modified platinum surfaces. This model also solves a long-lasting puzzle in electrocatalysis, namely why polycrystalline platinum electrodes are more active than platinum(111) for the HER.

Recently, it was established that a two-dimensional electron system can arise at the interface between two oxide insulators LaAlO3 and SrTiO3. This paradigmatic example exhibits metallic behaviors and magnetic properties between non-magnetic and insulating oxides. Despite a huge amount of theoretical and experimental work a thorough understanding is yet to be achieved. We analyzed the structural deformations of a LaAlO3 (001) slab induced by hydrogen adatoms and oxygen vacancies at its surface by means of density functional theory. Moreover, we investigated the influence of surface reconstruction on the density of states and determined the change of the local density of states at the Fermi level with increasing distance from the surface for bare LaAlO3 and for a conducting LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface. In addition, the Al-atom displacements and distortions of the TiO6-octahedra were estimated. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Within this article we highlight recent advances in the modeling of magnetic contributions to the finite temperature phase stability of structural materials. A key quantity in this context is the specific heat capacity Cp, since it provides a sensitive link to thermophysical and calorimetric experiments and to established thermodynamic databases. For iron-based materials, the Heisenberg model and its extensions are used as an elegant way for coupling ground-state ab initio calculations with concepts of many-body theory to simulate the temperature dependence. Besides analytical concepts to derive the free energy of the Heisenberg model, our work is mainly devoted to numerical approaches such as Monte-Carlo methods. In particular, we highlight the need to go beyond a classical to a fully quantum-mechanical description of magnetic excitations. In order to achieve a quantitative description of Cp, also lattice and electronic degrees of freedom as well as their dependence on magnetism are addressed. Due to the large variety of experimental data, pure iron is best suited to discuss the method developments and to perform evaluations. Nevertheless, the application to other magnetic elements (e.g. Co, Ni) and Fe-based materials (e.g. Fe3C) will also be addressed. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The effect of interfaces on the magnetic properties of multilayers is analyzed forNi2MnGa/Ni2MnSn system using density functional theory. The Ni spin moments at the interface change by about 30% compared to the bulk value, whereas the effect on the Mn spin moments is much less pronounced. A similar strong effect is also observed for the Ni orbital moments at the interface. The magneto-crystalline anisotropy of the multilayer systems can be understood by the additive contribution of the respective values of strained bulk materials. © 2016 World Scientific Publishing Company.

The complete bilayer is commonly considered as the termination of the (0001) surface of hexagonal ice. Experiments on thin crystalline ice structures grown on Cu(111) demonstrated a termination by admolecule structures on top of the bilayer. Modeling of complex admolecule terminations including admolecule clusters and decorated hexagon adrows within density functional theory and high-resolution STM imaging are combined for the structural analysis and to reveal possible causes for the apparent distinction. A dominant admolecule structure that appears during a short anneal at 130 K is identified as an arrangement of water dimer and trimers. By the combined approach, detailed models for decorated hexagon adrows are derived. Such structures possess low energy; however, the proton-ordered bilayer is more favorable at a small margin. Yet, energetically unfavorable bonding of water, for example, in thin ice films may drive the formation of admolecule terminations, for which kinetic effects still are an important factor. The results also shine light on the edge termination of bilayer islands. © 2015 American Chemical Society.

In this work we have studied transgranular cleavage and the fracture toughness of titanium hydrides by means of quantum mechanical calculations based on density functional theory. The calculations show that the surface energy decreases and the unstable stacking fault energy increases with increasing hydrogen content. This is consistent with experimental findings of brittle behaviour of titanium hydrides at low temperatures. Based on Griffith-Irwin theory we estimate the fracture toughness of the hydrides to be of the order of 1 MPa⋅m1/2, which concurs well with experimental data. To investigate the cleavage energetics, we analyse the decohesion at various crystallographic planes and determine the traction-separation laws based on the Rose's extended universal binding energy relation. The calculations predict that the peak stresses do not depend on the hydrogen content of the phases, but it is rather dependent on the crystallographic cleavage direction. However, it is found that the work of fracture decreases with increasing hydrogen content, which is an indication of hydrogen induced bond weakening in the material. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

Lattice distortions constitute one of the main features characterizing high entropy alloys. Local lattice distortions have, however, only rarely been investigated in these multi-component alloys. We, therefore, employ a combined theoretical electronic structure and experimental approach to study the atomistic distortions in the FeCoNiCrMn high entropy (Cantor) alloy by means of density-functional theory and extended X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy. Particular attention is paid to element-resolved distortions for each constituent. The individual mean distortions are small on average, <1%, but their fluctuations (i.e., standard deviations) are an order of magnitude larger, in particular for Cr and Mn. Good agreement between theory and experiment is found.

The solution, grain boundary (GB) segregation, and co-segregation of carbon and oxygen atoms in α-titanium are studied using density functional theory. For five titanium tilt boundaries, including T1, T2, and C1 twin systems, we determine the GB structure, as well as GB energy and excess volume. The segregation energies and volumes of carbon and oxygen are calculated for 23 inequivalent interstitial voids, while for co-segregation 75 configurations are considered. It is obtained that depending on the type of the segregation void both a positive and a negative segregation process is possible. The physical reasons of segregation are explained in terms of the analysis of the void atomic geometry, excess volume and features of the electronic structure at the Fermi level. Although carbon and oxygen show qualitatively similar properties in α-Ti, several distinctions are observed for their segregation behavior and mutual interactions. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.

We present a systematic atomic scale analysis of the structural evolution of long-period-stacking-ordered (LPSO) structures in the (i) α-Mg matrix and in the (ii) interdendritic LPSO phase of an Mg97Y2Zn1 (at. %) alloy annealed at 500°C, using high resolution high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM). Various types of metastable LPSO building block clusters have been observed in both regions. The thermodynamic phase stabilities computed by density-functional-theory calculations explain the diversity of the LPSO structures which are distinguished by their different arrangements of the Y/Zn enriched LPSO building blocks that have a local fcc stacking sequence on the close packed planes. A direct evidence of the transformation from 18R to 14H is presented. This finding suggests that LPSO structures can change their separation distance - quantified by the number of α-Mg layers between them - at a low energy penalty by generating the necessary Shockley partial dislocation on a specific glide plane. Based on our results the most probable transformation sequence of LPSO precipitate plates in the α-Mg matrix is: single building block → various metastable LPSO building block clusters → 14H, and the most probable transformation sequence in the interdendritic LPSO phase is: 18R→ various metastable LPSO building block clusters → 14H. The thermodynamically most stable structures in both the α-Mg matrix and the interdendritic LPSO phase are a mixture of 14H and α-Mg. © 2016 Acta Materialia Inc.

The solubility of zirconium (Zr) in the Nb4AlC3 host lattice was investigated by combining the experimental synthesis of (Nbx, Zr1-x)4AlC3 solid solutions with density functional theory calculations. High-purity solid solutions were prepared by reactive hot pressing of NbH0.89, ZrH2, Al, and C starting powder mixtures. The crystal structure of the produced solid solutions was determined using X-ray and neutron diffraction. The limited Zr solubility (maximum of 18.5% of the Nb content in the host lattice) in Nb4AlC3 observed experimentally is consistent with the calculated minimum in the energy of mixing. The lattice parameters and microstructure were evaluated over the entire solubility range, while the chemical composition of (Nb0.85, Zr0.15)4AlC3 was mapped using atom probe tomography. The hardness, Young's modulus, and fracture toughness at room temperature as well as the high-temperature flexural strength and E-modulus of (Nb0.85, Zr0.15)4AlC3 were investigated and compared to those of pure Nb4AlC3. Quite remarkably, an appreciable increase in fracture toughness was observed from 6.6 ± 0.1 MPa/m1/2 for pure Nb4AlC3 to 10.1 ± 0.3 MPa/m1/2 for the (Nb0.85, Zr0.15)4AlC3 solid solution. © 2016 American Chemical Society.

The modeling of materials at the atomistic level with interatomic potentials requires a reliable description of different bonding situations and relevant system properties. For this purpose, analytic bond-order potentials (BOPs) provide a systematic and robust approximation to density functional theory (DFT) and tight binding (TB) calculations at reasonable computational cost. This paper presents a formal analysis of the computational complexity of analytic BOP simulations, based on a detailed assessment of the most computationally intensive parts. Different implementation algorithms are presented alongside with optimizations for efficient numerical processing. The theoretical complexity study is complemented by systematic benchmarks of the scalability of the algorithms with increasing system size and accuracy level of the BOP approximation. Both approaches demonstrate that the computation of atomic forces in analytic BOPs can be performed with a similar scaling as the computation of atomic energies. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.

The six-iron cofactor of [FeFe]-hydrogenases (H-cluster) is the most efficient H2-forming catalyst in nature. It comprises a diiron active site with three carbonmonoxide (CO) and two cyanide (CN-) ligands in the active oxidized state (Hox) and one additional CO ligand in the inhibited state (Hox-CO). The diatomic ligands are sensitive reporter groups for structural changes of the cofactor. Their vibrational dynamics were monitored by real- Time attenuated total reflection Fouriertransform infrared spectroscopy. Combination of 13CO gas exposure, blue or red light irradiation, and controlled hydration of three different [FeFe]-hydrogenase proteins produced 8 Hox and 16 Hox-CO species with all possible isotopic exchange patterns. Extensive density functional theory calculations revealed the vibrational mode couplings of the carbonyl ligands and uniquely assigned each infrared spectrum to a specific labeling pattern. For Hox-CO, agreement between experimental and calculated infrared frequencies improved by up to one order of magnitude for an apical CN- At the distal iron ion of the cofactor as opposed to an apical CO. For Hox, two equally probable isomers with partially rotated ligands were suggested. Interconversion between these structures implies dynamic ligand reorientation at the H-cluster. Our experimental protocol for site-selective 13CO isotope editing combined with computational species assignment opens new perspectives for characterization of functional intermediates in the catalytic cycle.

Precipitates of topologically close-packed (TCP) phases play an important role in hardening mechanisms of high-performance steels. We analyze the influence of atomic size, electron count, magnetism and external stress on TCP phase stability in Fe-based binary transition metal alloys. Our density-functional theory calculations of structural stability are complemented by an analysis with an empirical structure map for TCP phases. The structural stability and lattice parameters of the Fe-Nb/Mo/V compounds are in good agreement with experiment. The average magnetic moments follow the Slater-Pauling relation to the average number of valence-electrons and can be rationalized in terms of the electronic density of states. The stabilizing effect of the magnetic energy, estimated by additional non-magnetic calculations, increases as the magnetic moment increases with band filling for the binary systems of Fe and early transition metals. For the case of Fe2Nb, we demonstrate that the influence of magnetism and external stress is sufficiently large to alter the energetic ordering of the closely competing Laves phases C14, C15 and C36. We find that the A15 phase is not stabilized by atomic-size differences, while the stability of C14 is increasing with increasing difference in atomic size. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Density functional theory (DFT) has been performed to characterize the structural stability and Lewis acidic properties of the T-COE-4 zeolites, in which the linked site between the layers is isomorphously substituted by the tetravalent Ti-, Sn-, or Zr- heteroatom. The effects of substitution energy and equilibrium geometry parameters on the stability of T-COE-4 are investigated. The computed Fukui function values and the adsorption of ammonia, pyridine, water and trimethylphosphine oxide molecules have been employed to predict the Lewis acid strength of the T-COE-4 zeolites. It is found that the smaller the O1-T-O2 bond angle is, the more difficult is to form the regular tetrahedral unit. The substitution energies at the linker position increase in the following sequence: Ti-COE-4 < Sn-COE-4 < Zr-COE-4. The incorporation of Ti-, Sn-, or Zr-heteroatom enhances the Lewis acidity of COE-4 zeolite. It is predicted that the Lewis acid strength increases in the order of Ti-COE-4 < Zr-COE-4 & Sn-COE-4 by the adsorption of different base molecules. Six O-T-O bond angles are divided into different extent to form the analogous trigonal bipyramid structures in the optimized ligand adsorbed complexes. These findings could be beneficial for the structural design and catalytic function modification of the interlayer-expanded zeolites. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The bond-order potentials are derived from density functional theory by a systematic coarse graining of the electronic structure. Within their functional form the bond-order potentials comprise covalent bond formation, charge transfer and magnetism. We review the derivation of the bond-order potentials from density functional theory and discuss their application to the simulation of refractory transition metals. We show that the derived functional form of the bond-order potentials ensures the transferability of the potentials to atomic environments that have not been taken into account in the parameterization. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.

The motion of D2O monomers is investigated on a NaCl(100) bilayer on Ag(111) between 42.3 and 52.3 K by scanning tunneling microscopy. The diffusion distance histogram reveals a squared diffusion lattice that agrees with the primitive unit cell of the (100) surface. From the Arrhenius dependence, we derive the diffusion energy, the pre-exponential factor, and the attempt frequency. The mechanism of the motion is identified by comparison of the experimental results to theoretical calculations. Via low temperature adsorption site determination in connection with density functional theory, we reveal an influence of the metallic support onto the intermediate state of the diffusive motion. © 2015 American Chemical Society.

A combined density functional theory and solid-state nudged elastic band study is presented to investigate the martensitic transformation between β → (α″, ω) phases in the Ti-Ta system. The minimum energy paths along the transformation are calculated and the transformation mechanisms as well as relative stabilities of the different phases are discussed for various compositions. The analysis of the transformation paths is complemented by calculations of phonon spectra to determine the dynamical stability of the β, α ″, and ω phase. Our theoretical results confirm the experimental findings that with increasing Ta concentration there is a competition between the destabilisation of the α ″ and ω phase and the stabilisation of the high-temperature β phase. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Based on ab initio density functional theory (DFT) calculations we derive an analytical expression for the interplanar potential of grain boundaries and single crystals as a function of coupled tensile and shear displacements. This energy function captures even details of the grain boundary behaviour, such as the tension-softening of the shear instability of aluminium grain boundaries, with good accuracy. The good agreement between the analytical model and the DFT calculations is achieved by introducing two new characteristic parameters, namely the position of the generalised unstable stacking fault with respect to the stable stacking fault, and the ratio of stable and unstable generalised stacking fault energies. One of the potentials' parameters also serves as a criterion to judge if a grain boundary deforms via crack propagation or dislocation nucleation. We suggest this potential function for application in continuum models, where constitutive relationships for grain boundaries need to be derived from a sound physical model. © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd.

We present azimuth- and polarization-dependent infrared spectroscopy results obtained under ultra-high vacuum conditions on surface species formed by the interaction of formic acid with the mixed-terminated ZnO(101¯0) surface. Since there are no previous IRRAS data for formic-acid derived species on any ZnO single crystal surfaces, we have carried out calculations using density function theory to aid the interpretation of the results. From our combined experimental and theoretical data we conclude that two different formate species are formed. The more strongly bound species is a bidentate with the formate molecular plane oriented along the [12¯10] direction. The less strongly bound species is a quasi-bidentate with its molecular plane oriented along the [0001] direction. This second species is characterized by a strong hydrogen bond between a surface OH species and the formate. In addition, IR data were recorded for the same molecule adsorbed on commercial ZnO nanoparticles. The different bands of the powder IR-data are assigned on the basis of the experimental and theoretical results obtained for the single crystal surface. This study demonstrates the importance of the Surface Science approach to heterogeneous catalysis also for ZnO, an important catalyst for the conversion of syngas to methanol. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media.

Better understanding of the factors responsible for the long-term stability of electrocatalysts is of increasing importance for the development of new generations of efficient electrode materials relevant for sustainable energy provision. Therefore, experiments with model, often single-crystal catalytic surfaces are of significance for fundamental electrochemistry and technological applications. Among model electrocatalysts, near-surface alloys (NSAs) of Pt with Cu, Ni and other metals formed via electrochemical deposition and thermal annealing have shown remarkable properties, demonstrating high activity towards a number of important reactions, including the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and CO oxidation. However, relatively little is known about the electrochemical stability and mechanisms of degradation of model NSAs. In this work, we employ a simple electrochemical approach, supported by density functional theory calculations, to evaluate the stability of Cu-Pt(111) NSAs in 0.1 M HClO4. Our results show that ∼30% of the Cu atoms initially incorporated into the second atomic layer of Pt are lost within the first 2000 cycles performed between 0.05 V and 1.0 V (RHE). After 5000 cycles, ca. half of the Cu atoms initially placed in the second atomic layer still remained in the subsurface region. The dissolution of Cu has a substantial impact on the measured shift in the average OH-binding energy for the catalyst surface and, consequently, on the ORR activity. Interestingly, after dissolution of Cu from NSAs, voltammetric features, which are characteristic to the Pt(111) facets, are partially restored suggesting the formation of NSA and Pt(111) domains in the resulting surface. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We derive the Gibbs energy including the anharmonic contribution due to phonon-phonon interactions for an extensive set of unary fcc metals (Al, Ag, Au, Cu, Ir, Ni, Pb, Pd, Pt, Rh) by combining density-functional-theory (DFT) calculations with efficient statistical sampling approaches. We show that the anharmonicity of the macroscopic system can be traced back to the anharmonicity in local pairwise interactions. Using this insight, we derive and benchmark a highly efficient approach which allows the computation of anharmonic contributions using a few T=0K DFT calculations only. © Published by the American Physical Society 2015.

In the present study we investigate the creep behavior of a Ni-base single crystal superalloy. We evaluate the stress and temperature dependence of the minimum creep rate, which shows a power law type of stress dependence (characterized by a stress exponent n) and an exponential type of temperature dependence (characterized by an apparent activation energy Qapp). Under conditions of high temperature (1323K) and low stress (160MPa) creep, n and Qapp are determined as 5.3 and 529kJ/mol, respectively. For lower temperatures (1123K) and higher stresses (600MPa) the stress exponent n is higher (8.5) while the apparent activation energy of creep is lower (382kJ/mol). We show that there is a general trend: stress exponents n increase with increasing stress and decreasing temperature, while higher apparent activation energies are observed for lower stresses and higher temperatures. We use density functional theory (DFT) to calculate the activation energy of diffusion for Re in a binary Ni-Re alloy with low Re-concentrations. The resulting energy is almost a factor 2 smaller than the apparent activation energy of creep. We explain why it is not straightforward to rationalize the temperature dependence of creep merely on the basis of the diffusion of one alloying element. We show that the evolution of the microstructure also must be considered. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.

The production of heavy oil is increasing in coming years due to short fall of conventional light crude. However, extremely high viscosity and abundant amount of heteroatoms (S, O and N) in the structure of heavy oil molecules are one of the main challenges in their exploitation, transportation and processing. Aquathermolysis are often proposed as a method to reduce the viscosity and improve the rheological properties of heavy oils. Aquathermolysis is a reaction of heated water with hydrocarbons molecules in the absence of oxygen. In the present work we have considered different reactions of cyclohexyl phenyl sulfide molecule with water as a very particular model for aquathermolysis process by means of density functional methods. Obtained tendencies in reaction pathways are coherent with previous experimental results. Thus, ab initio methods demonstrated applicability for comparative studies of chemical reaction pathways in aquathermolysis and could be used for the further screening of possible catalysts for this process. © 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.

Abstract In this work, the interaction of hydrogen with high-angle GBs in nickel has been investigated by means of density functional theory simulations. Two distinct types of GBs have been considered: the Σ3(111)[1¯10] with a close-packed interface structure and the Σ5(210)[001] with a less dense interface structure consisting of open structural units. Our calculations reveal that these two GBs have a markedly different interaction behavior with atomic hydrogen. The close-packed Σ3 GB neither traps H nor enhances its diffusion, but instead acts as a two-dimensional diffusion barrier. In contrast, the Σ5 GB provides numerous trapping sites for H within the open structural units as well as easy migration pathways for H diffusion along the GB plane that can enhance the H diffusivity by about two orders of magnitude compared to bulk Ni. The obtained results are analysed in detail and compared with available experimental and other theoretical data. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc.

Cu2ZnSnSe4 thin-films for photovoltaic applications are investigated using combined atom probe tomography and ab initio density functional theory. The atom probe studies reveal nano-sized grains of Cu2Zn5SnSe8 and Cu2Zn6SnSe9 composition, which cannot be assigned to any known phase reported in the literature. Both phases are considered to be metastable, as density functional theory calculations yield positive energy differences with respect to the decomposition into Cu2ZnSnSe4 and ZnSe. Among the conceivable crystal structures for both phases, a distorted zinc-blende structure shows the lowest energy, which is a few tens of meV below the energy of a wurtzite structure. A band gap of 1.1 eV is calculated for both the Cu2Zn5SnSe8 and Cu2Zn6SnSe9 phases. Possible effects of these phases on solar cell performance are discussed. © 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.

Ultimately thin multiferroics arouse remarkable interest, motivated by the diverse utility of coexisting ferroelectric and (anti)ferromagnetic order parameters for novel functional device paradigms. However, the ferroic order is inevitably destroyed below a critical size of several nanometers. Here, we demonstrate a new path toward realization of atomically thin multiferroic monolayers while resolving a controversial origin for unexpected "-dilute ferromagnetism" emerged in nanocrystals of nonmagnetic ferroelectrics PbTiO3. The state-of-the-art hybrid functional of Hartree-Fock and density functional theories successfully identifies the origin and underlying physics; oxygen vacancies interacting with grain boundaries (GBs) bring about (anti)ferromagnetism with localized spin moments at the neighboring Ti atoms. This is due to spin-polarized defect states with broken orbital symmetries at GBs. In addition, the energetics of oxygen vacancies indicates their self-assembling nature at GBs resulting in considerably high concentration, which convert the oxygen-deficient GBs into multiferroic monolayers due to their atomically thin interfacial structure. This synthetic concept that realizes multiferroic and multifunctional oxides in a monolayered geometry through the self-assembly of atomic defects and grain boundary engineering opens a new avenue for promising paradigms of novel functional devices. © 2014 American Chemical Society.

By combination of two independent approaches, nuclear resonant inelastic x-ray scattering and first-principles calculations in the framework of density functional theory, we demonstrate significant changes in the element-resolved vibrational density of states across the first-order transition from the ferromagnetic low temperature to the paramagnetic high temperature phase of LaFe13-xSix. These changes originate from the itinerant electron metamagnetism associated with Fe and lead to a pronounced magneto-elastic softening despite the large volume decrease at the transition. The increase in lattice entropy associated with the Fe subsystem is significant and contributes cooperatively with the magnetic and electronic entropy changes to the excellent magneto- and barocaloric properties. © 2015 American Physical Society.

Co-Al-W-based alloys are promising new materials for high-temperature applications. They owe their high-temperature strength to hardening by ternary L12-Co3(Al1-xWx) precipitates, which may form even though binary Co3Al is not stable. In the current work, density functional theory calculations are performed to study the solubility and ordering of the transition metals W, Mo, Ti, and Ta at the Al sublattice in L12-Co3Al. The sublattice disorder is modelled with a newly parametrised cluster expansion and compared to results using special quasi-random structures. Our results for W and Mo show that the mixing energy exhibits a minimum at approximately x = 0.7. However, the computed small values of the mixing energies indicate that W and Mo atoms are fully disordered with the Al atoms already at low temperatures. For Ti and Ta we find no sizeable driving force for ordering with the Al atoms. The computed solubilities on the Al sublattice obtained are in the range of 40-80 meV/atom for W and Mo and less than 25 meV/atom for Ti and Ta. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The theory of analytic Bond-Order Potentials as applied to non-collinear magnetic structures of transition metals is extended to take into account explicit rotations of Hamiltonian and local moment matrix elements between locally and globally defined spin-coordinate systems. Expressions for the gradients of the energy with respect to the Hamiltonian matrix elements, the interatomic forces and the magnetic torques are derived. The method is applied to simulations of the rotation of magnetic moments in α iron, as well as α and β manganese, based on d-valent orthogonal tight-binding parametrizations of the electronic structure. A new weighted-average terminator is introduced to improve the convergence of the Bond-Order Potential energies and torques with respect to tight-binding reference values, although the general behavior is qualitatively correct for low-moment expansions. © 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd.

A good heterogeneous catalyst for a given chemical reaction very often has only one specific type of surface site that is catalytically active. Widespread methodologies such as Sabatier-type activity plots determine optimal adsorption energies to maximize catalytic activity, but these are difficult to use as guidelines to devise new catalysts. We introduce "coordination-activity plots" that predict the geometric structure of optimal active sites. The method is illustrated on the oxygen reduction reaction catalyzed by platinum. Sites with the same number of first-nearest neighbors as (111) terraces but with an increased number of second-nearest neighbors are predicted to have superior catalytic activity. We used this rationale to create highly active sites on platinum (111), without alloying and using three different affordable experimental methods.

We used time-lapsed scanning tunneling microscopy between 43 and 50 K and density functional theory (DFT) to explore the basic surface diffusion steps of cobalt phthalocyanine (CoPc) molecules on the Ag(100) surface. We show that the CoPc molecules translate and rotate on the surface in the same temperature range. Both processes are associated with similar activation energies; however, the translation is more frequently observed. Our DFT calculations provide the activation energies for the translation of the CoPc molecule between the nearest hollow sites and the rotation at both the hollow and the bridge sites. The activation energies are only consistent with the experimental findings, if the surface diffusion mechanism involves a combined translational and rotational molecular motion. Additionally, two channels of motion are identified: the first provides only a channel for translation, while the second provides a channel for both the translation and the rotation. The existence of the two channels explains a higher rate for the translation determined in experiment. © 2015 American Chemical Society.

Phonon dispersion relations and electron-phonon coupling of hole-doped trigonal GeTe have been computed by density functional perturbation theory. This compound is a prototypical phase change material of interest for applications in phase change non-volatile memories. The calculations allowed us to estimate the electron-phonon contribution to the thermal boundary resistance at the interface between the crystalline and amorphous phases present in the device. The lattice contribution to the thermal boundary resistance has been computed by non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations with an interatomic potential based on a neural network scheme. We find that the electron-phonon term contributes to the thermal boundary resistance to an extent which is strongly dependent on the concentration and mobility of the holes. Further, for measured values of the holes concentration and electrical conductivity, the electron-phonon term is larger than the contribution from the lattice. It is also shown that the presence of Ge vacancies, responsible for the p-type degenerate character of the semiconductor, strongly affects the lattice thermal conductivity of the crystal. © 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.

In the present work we explain the concentration dependence of the martensite start temperature (MS) in Ni-Ti-based shape memory alloys (SMAs). We briefly review the present level of understanding and show that there is a need for further work. We then investigate the strong dependence of MS on alloy composition in binary Ni-Ti, ternary Ni-Ti-X (X = Cr, Cu, Hf, Pd, V, Zr) and quaternary Ni-Ti-Cu-Y (Y = Co, Pd) SMAs. For binary Ni-Ti, we combine differential scanning calorimetry experiments with insight gained through the application of the density functional theory (DFT) to show that heats of transformation ΔH decrease as Ni concentrations increase from 50.0 to 51.2 at.%. This causes a shift in the Gibbs free energy curves of austenite GA(T) and martensite GM(T), which in turn results in a lower MS temperature. Our DFT results suggest that the strong decrease of ΔH is caused by a stabilization of the B2 phase by structural relaxations around Ni antisite atoms, together with a gradual destabilization of B19′. The martensite start temperatures and the latent heats of transformation for binary, ternary and quaternary Ni-Ti-based SMAs are closely related. We observe smaller latent heats when the geometrical differences between the crystal structures of austenite and martensite decrease. © 2015 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A study of particle size effects during the catalytic CO2 electroreduction on size-controlled Cu nanoparticles (NPs) is presented. Cu NP catalysts in the 2-15 nm mean size range were prepared, and their catalytic activity and selectivity during CO2 electroreduction were analyzed and compared to a bulk Cu electrode. A dramatic increase in the catalytic activity and selectivity for H2 and CO was observed with decreasing Cu particle size, in particular, for NPs below 5 nm. Hydrocarbon (methane and ethylene) selectivity was increasingly suppressed for nanoscale Cu surfaces. The size dependence of the surface atomic coordination of model spherical Cu particles was used to rationalize the experimental results. Changes in the population of low-coordinated surface sites and their stronger chemisorption were linked to surging H2 and CO selectivities, higher catalytic activity, and smaller hydrocarbon selectivity. The presented activity-selectivity-size relations provide novel insights in the CO2 electroreduction reaction on nanoscale surfaces. Our smallest nanoparticles (∼2 nm) enter the ab initio computationally accessible size regime, and therefore, the results obtained lend themselves well to density functional theory (DFT) evaluation and reaction mechanism verification. © 2014 American Chemical Society.

The computer simulation of condensed systems is a challenging task. While electronic structure methods like density-functional theory (DFT) usually provide a good compromise between accuracy and efficiency, they are computationally very demanding and thus applicable only to systems containing up to a few hundred atoms. Unfortunately, many interesting problems require simulations to be performed on much larger systems involving thousands of atoms or more. Consequently, more efficient methods are urgently needed, and a lot of effort has been spent on the development of a large variety of potentials enabling simulations with significantly extended time and length scales. Most commonly, these potentials are based on physically motivated functional forms and thus perform very well for the applications they have been designed for. On the other hand, they are often highly system-specific and thus cannot easily be transferred from one system to another. Moreover, their numerical accuracy is restricted by the intrinsic limitations of the imposed functional forms. In recent years, several novel types of potentials have emerged, which are not based on physical considerations. Instead, they aim to reproduce a set of reference electronic structure data as accurately as possible by using very general and flexible functional forms. In this review we will survey a number of these methods. While they differ in the choice of the employed mathematical functions, they all have in common that they provide high-quality potential-energy surfaces, while the efficiency is comparable to conventional empirical potentials. It has been demonstrated that in many cases these potentials now offer a very interesting new approach to study complex systems with hitherto unreached accuracy. © EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2014.

We optimize the magnetic and structural properties of Ni(Co,Cu)MnSn Heusler alloys for the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) by means of density functional theory combined with Monte Carlo simulations of a classical Heisenberg model. NiMnSn alloys show a drop of magnetization at the martensitic phase transition, which leads to the inverse MCE. We find either disordered or frustrated magnetic configurations directly below the martensitic transition temperature. However, the jump of magnetization at the magnetostructural transition is small as the austenite is in a ferrimagnetic state and not fully magnetized. For Co and Cu substitution, the structural phase transition temperature shifts to lower temperatures. In particular, Co substitution is promising, as the magnetization of the austenite increases by additional ferromagnetic interactions, which enhances the jump of magnetization. © 2014 IEEE.

The electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 to industrial chemicals and fuels is a promising pathway to sustainable electrical energy storage and to an artificial carbon cycle, but it is currently hindered by the low energy efficiency and low activity displayed by traditional electrode materials. We report here the size-dependent catalytic activity of micelle-synthesized Au nanoparticles (NPs) in the size range of ∼1-8 nm for the electroreduction of CO2 to CO in 0.1 M KHCO3. A drastic increase in current density was observed with decreasing NP size, along with a decrease in Faradaic selectivity toward CO. Density functional theory calculations showed that these trends are related to the increase in the number of low-coordinated sites on small NPs, which favor the evolution of H2 over CO2 reduction to CO. We show here that the H2/CO product ratio can be specifically tailored for different industrial processes by tuning the size of the catalyst particles. © 2014 American Chemical Society.

The orientation of water molecules on water bilayers is investigated on Cu(111) by a combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory. Theory predicts that the application of a field reorients the adsorbed water molecules at a distance of close to a nanometer from the surface. Experimental evidence is presented for this prediction. Furthermore, the process differs strongly between adsorption on two and on three ordered layers. We propose that these results give insight into the behavior of the diffusive layer close to electrodes. So simple? Since the basic idea of ultrahigh-vacuum (UHV) electrochemical modeling emerged, it has been claimed that UHV model experiments are too simple because they do not include the electrode potential. This combined scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory study gives insight into the influence of the electric field on single molecules in the diffusive layer. A field reorients adsorbed water molecules on water bilayers on Cu(111) at a distance of about 1nm from the surface. © 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Gaining experimental insight into the intrinsic properties of nanoparticles (NPs) represents a scientific challenge due to the difficulty of deconvoluting these properties from various environmental effects such as the presence of adsorbates or a support. A synergistic combination of experimental and theoretical tools, including X-ray absorption fine-structure spectroscopy, scanning transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and density functional theory was used in this study to investigate the structure and electronic properties of small (∼1-4 nm) Au NPs synthesized by an inverse micelle encapsulation method. Metallic Au NPs encapsulated by polystyrene 2-vinylpiridine (PS-P2VP) were studied in the solution phase (dispersed in toluene) as well as after deposition on γ-Al2O3. Our experimental data revealed a size-dependent contraction of the interatomic distances of the ligand-protected NPs with decreasing NP size. These findings are in good agreement with the results from DFT calculations of unsupported Au NPs surrounded by P2VP, as well as those obtained for pure (ligand-free) Au clusters of analogous sizes. A comparison of the experimental and theoretical results supports the conclusion that the P2VP ligands employed to stabilize the gold NPs do not lead to strong distortions in the average interatomic spacing. The changes in the electronic structure of the Au-P2VP NPs were found to originate mainly from finite size effects and not from charge transfer between the NPs and their environment (e.g., Au-ligand interactions). In addition, the isolated ligand-protected experimental NPs only display a weak interaction with the support, making them an ideal model system for the investigation of size-dependent physical and chemical properties of structurally well-defined nanomaterials. © 2014 American Chemical Society.

Adsorption of electronegative elements on a metal surface usually leads to an increase in the work function and decrease in the binding energy as the adsorbate coverage rises. Using density-functional theory calculations, we show that Cl adsorbed on a Mg(0001) surface complies with these expectations, but adsorption of {N,O,F} causes a decrease in the work function and an increase in the binding energy. Analyzing the electronic structure, we show that the presence of a highly polarizable electron spill-out in front of Mg(0001) causes this unusual adsorption behavior and is responsible for the appearance of a hitherto unknown net-attractive lateral electrostatic interaction between same charged adsorbates. © 2014 American Physical Society.

A new development of numerical bond-order potentials (BOPs) for the non-magnetic transition metals V, Nb, Ta, Cr, Mo and W is presented. The principles on which the BOPs have been set up are the same as in earlier developments (Aoki et al 2007 Prog. Mater. Sci. 52 154). However, the bond integrals are based on the recently advanced method of parametrization of tight-binding from DFT calculations (Madsen et al 2011 Phys. Rev. B 83 4119, Urban et al 2011 Phys. Rev. B 84 155119) and do not require any screening. At the same time, the functional form of the environmentally dependent repulsion is identified with the functional form of the repulsion arising from the overlap of s and p electrons in argon as proposed in Aoki and Kurokawa (2007 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 19 136228). This is justified by the same physical origin of the environment dependent repulsion, which in transition metals arises from the overlap of s electrons that are being squeezed into the ion core regions under the influence of the strong covalent d bonds. The testing of the developed BOPs involves investigation of alternative higher energy structures, transformation paths connecting the bcc structure with other structures via continuously distorted configurations, evaluation of the vacancy formation energy and calculation of phonon spectra. In all cases, the BOP calculations are in more than satisfactory agreement with either DFT calculations and/or available experimental data. The calculated γ-surfaces for {1 0 1} planes all suggest that the core of 1/21 1 1 screw dislocations is non-degenerate in the transition metals. This is also in full agreement with available calculations that account fully for the quantum-mechanical nature of the d electrons that provide the bulk of the bonding in transition metals. The testing of developed BOPs clearly demonstrates that they are transferable to structures well outside the regime of the ideal bcc lattice and are suitable for investigating the atomic structure and behaviour of extended crystal defects. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.

The paper discusses the stabilization of the martensite in Ni2MnGa at finite temperatures that is caused by the substitution of Ni by Pt. For this purpose a recently developed ab initio based formalism employing density functional theory is applied. The free energies of the relevant austenite and martensite phases of Ni1.75Pt0.25MnGa are determined incorporating quasiharmonic phonons and fixed-spin magnons. In addition the dependence of the transition temperatures on the Pt concentration is investigated. Though our results are in qualitative agreement with estimates based on ground-state energies, they clearly demonstrate that a proper treatment of finite temperature contributions is important to predict the martensitic transition quantitatively. © 2014, ASM International.

Sodium decorated stacking faults (SFs) were recently identified as the primary cause of potential-induced degradation in silicon (Si) solar-cells due to local electrical short-circuiting of the p-n junctions. In the present study, we investigate these defects by first principles calculations based on density functional theory in order to elucidate their structural, thermodynamic, and electronic properties. Our calculations show that the presence of sodium (Na) atoms leads to a substantial elongation of the Si-Si bonds across the SF, and the coverage and continuity of the Na layer strongly affect the diffusion behavior of Na within the SF. An analysis of the electronic structure reveals that the presence of Na in the SF gives rise to partially occupied defect levels within the Si band gap that participate in electrical conduction along the SF. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

Glass-forming liquids exhibit a rich phenomenology upon confinement. This is often related to the effects arising from wall-fluid interactions. Here we focus on the interesting limit where the separation of the confining walls becomes of the order of a few particle diameters. For a moderately polydisperse, densely packed hard-sphere fluid confined between two smooth hard walls, we show via event-driven molecular dynamics simulations the emergence of a multiple reentrant glass transition scenario upon a variation of the wall separation. Using thermodynamic relations, this reentrant phenomenon is shown to persist also under constant chemical potential. This allows straightforward experimental investigation and opens the way to a variety of applications in micro-and nanotechnology, where channel dimensions are comparable to the size of the contained particles. The results are in line with theoretical predictions obtained by a combination of density functional theory and the mode-coupling theory of the glass transition. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited.

The deformability and strength of lamellar two-phase (γ and α2) TiAl alloys strongly depends on the mechanical properties of the different interfaces in such microstructures. We carried out ab-initio density functional theory calculations of interface energy and strength for all known interface variants as well as the corresponding single crystal slip/cleavage planes to obtain a comprehensive database of key mechanical quantities. This data collection can be used for meso-scale simulations of deformation and fracture in TiAl. In spite of the different atomic configurations of the lamellar interfaces and the single crystal planes, the calculated values for the tensile strength are in the same range and can be considered as equal in a meso-scale model. Analysis of generalized stacking fault energy surfaces showed that the shear strength is directional dependent, however, the [112̄] direction is an invariant easy gliding direction in all investigated systems. The probability of different dislocation dissociation reactions as part of a shear deformation mechanism are discussed as well. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Interaction of Re, Ta, W and Mo solutes with vacancies and their diffusion in fcc Ni is investigated by density-functional theory in combination with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. Interaction energies are calculated for the first six neighbor shells around the solutes and a complete set of diffusion barriers for these shells is provided. Further, diffusion coefficients for the four elements in Ni as well as for vacancies in the presence of these elements are calculated. The calculated solute diffusion coefficients based on our ab initio data are found to compare favorably to experimental values. The mobility of the vacancies as a key factor in dislocation climb is only minimally influenced by the solute atoms within the dilute limit. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.

COE-4 zeolites possess a unique two-dimensional ten-ring pore structure with the Si(OH)2 hydroxyl groups attached to the linker position between the ferrierite-type layers, which has been demonstrated through the interlayer-expansion approach in our previous work (H. Gies et al. Chem. Mater. 2012, 24, 1536). Herein, density functional theory is used to study the framework stability and Brønsted acidity of the zeolite T-COE-4, in which the tetravalent Si is isomorphously substituted by a trivalent Fe, B, Ga, or Al heteroatom at the linker position. The influences of substitution energy and equilibrium geometry parameters on the stability of T-COE-4 are investigated in detail. The relative acid strength of the linker position is revealed by the proton affinity, charge analysis, and NH3 adsorption. It is found that the range of the 〈T-O-Si〉 angles is widened to maintain the stability of isomorphously substituted T-COE-4 zeolites. The smaller the 〈O1-T-O2〉 bond angle is, the more difficult is to form the regular tetrahedral unit. Thus, the substitution energies at the linker positions increase in the following sequence: Al-COE-4 < Ga-COE-4 < Fe-COE-4 < B-COE-4. The adsorption of NH3 as a probe molecule indicates that the acidity can affect the hydrogen-bonding interaction between (N-H⋯O2) and (N⋯H-O2). The relative Brønsted-acid strength of the interlayer-expanded T-COE-4 zeolite decreases in the order of Al-COE-4 > Ga-COE-4 > Fe-COE-4 > B-COE-4. These findings may be helpful for the structural design and functional modification of interlayer-expanded zeolites. Calculating exchange: Density functional theory is employed to survey the differences in the structure, stability, and Brønsted-acidic properties at the linker-T active site, in which the tetrahedral silicon is isomorphously substituted by a Fe, B, Ga, or Al atom in the interlayer-expanded zeolite, COE-4. Substitution energy and geometric parameters of T-COE-4 zeolites are discussed in detail, and their relative acid strengths are predicted. © 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Hydrogen interstitials in austenitic Fe-Mn alloys were studied using density-functional theory to gain insights into the mechanisms of hydrogen embrittlement in high-strength Mn steels. The investigations reveal that H atoms at octahedral interstitial sites prefer a local environment containing Mn atoms rather than Fe atoms. This phenomenon is closely examined combining total energy calculations and crystal orbital Hamilton population analysis. Contributions from various electronic phenomena such as elastic, chemical, and magnetic effects are characterized. The primary reason for the environmental preference is a volumetric effect, which causes a linear dependence on the number of nearest-neighbour Mn atoms. A secondary electronic/magnetic effect explains the deviations from this linearity. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

All-atom methods treat solute and solvent at the same level of electronic structure theory and statistical mechanics. All-atom computation of acidity constants (pKa) and redox potentials is still a challenge. In this Account, we review such a method combining density functional theory based molecular dynamics (DFTMD) and free energy perturbation (FEP) methods. The key computational tool is a FEP based method for reversible insertion of a proton or electron in a periodic DFTMD model system. The free energy of insertion (work function) is computed by thermodynamic integration of vertical energy gaps obtained from total energy differences. The problem of the loss of a physical reference for ionization energies under periodic boundary conditions is solved by comparing with the proton work function computed for the same supercell. The scheme acts as a computational hydrogen electrode, and the DFTMD redox energies can be directly compared with experimental redox potentials. Consistent with the closed shell nature of acid dissociation, pKa estimates computed using the proton insertion/removal scheme are found to be significantly more accurate than the redox potential calculations. This enables us to separate the DFT error from other sources of uncertainty such as finite system size and sampling errors. Drawing an analogy with charged defects in solids, we trace the error in redox potentials back to underestimation of the energy gap of the extended states of the solvent. Accordingly the improvement in the redox potential as calculated by hybrid functionals is explained as a consequence of the opening up of the bandgap by the Hartree-Fock exchange component in hybrids. Test calculations for a number of small inorganic and organic molecules show that the hybrid functional implementation of our method can reproduce acidity constants with an uncertainty of 1-2 pKa units (0.1 eV). The error for redox potentials is in the order of 0.2 V. (Figure Presented). © 2014 American Chemical Society.

In this work formation of the very first layers of carbon nanofilms on single crystal quartz substrates is studied. Films where grown by molecular beam growth, and have been characterized by Raman spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. Formation of a non-conductive carbon layer of low crystallinity on the initial stage of the growth process is reported. Ab-initio calculations with an atom-by-atom approach have been performed to explain the experimental data. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

Combining aberration corrected high resolution transmission electron microscopy and density functional theory calculations we propose an explanation of the antisurfactant effect of Si in GaN growth. We identify the atomic structure of a Si delta-doped layer (commonly called SiNx mask) as a SiGaN3 monolayer that resembles a √3×√3 R30 surface reconstruction containing one Si atom, one Ga atom, and a Ga vacancy (V Ga) in its unit cell. Our density functional theory calculations show that GaN growth on top of this SiGaN3 layer is inhibited by forming an energetically unfavorable electrical dipole moment that increases with layer thickness and that is caused by charge transfer between cation dangling bonds at the surface to VGa bound at subsurface sites. © 2013 American Physical Society.

The vibrational sum frequency generation (VSFG) spectrum of the water liquid-vapor (LV) interface is calculated using density functional theory-based molecular dynamics simulations. The real and imaginary parts of the spectrum are in good agreement with the experimental data, and we provide an assignment of the SFG bands according to the dipole orientation of the interfacial water molecules. We use an instantaneous definition of the surface, which is more adapted to the study of interfacial phenomena than the Gibbs dividing surface. By calculating the vibrational (infrared, Raman) properties for interfaces of varying thickness, we show that the bulk spectra signatures appear after a thin layer of 2-3 Å only. We therefore use this value as a criterion for calculating the VSFG spectrum. © 2012 American Chemical Society.

Gold catalysis: Experimental and theoretical data demonstrated consistently that the interfacial sites on a Au/TiO2 catalyst show both high reactivity and selectivity for low-temperature methanol oxidation with O 2 to give formaldehyde. The microscopic mechanism of this complex reaction has been unraveled in full molecular detail (see picture, gold cluster on TiO2 surface). Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Density-functional theory calculations have been carried out to study the adsorption of methanethiolate and atomic sulfur as a nonmolecular reference at the Cu(111) surface. A large number of surface models have been investigated considering a variety of binding sites and coverages at the ideal and reconstructed surface. For methanethiolate, we find that the proposed [5013] supercell commonly used to approximate the experimentally observed noncommensurate pseudo(100) reconstruction yields the lowest surface energy, but several similar local minima exist differing in the positions of the copper atoms. None of these structures show the regular nearly square coordination of the thiolate species observed in scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). Modifying the chemical composition of the relaxed layer, e.g., by adding another copper atom, yields structures of comparable stability. It is thus very likely that the proposed supercell is not a good approximation to the true pseudo(100) phase and that larger unit cells are needed to allow for a realistic relaxation of the reconstructed layer. For atomic sulfur, it is well established that the most stable phase at Cu(111) is a (√7 × √7)R19.1 reconstruction. Its structure, however, has been discussed controversially in the literature for many years. While there is a consensus that the unit cell contains three sulfur atoms, there are still several competing models differing in the number of copper adatoms in the reconstructed layer. We find that three models have a very similar stability, and a three-copper adatom model is only marginally preferred. These results will be of importance for many fields from heterogeneous catalysis to covalent mechanochemistry and molecular nanomechanics. © 2012 American Chemical Society.

A promising approach to improving the performance of iron-phosphate FePO4 cathode materials for Li-ion batteries is to partly or fully substitute Fe with other metals. Here, we use high-throughput density-functional theory (DFT) calculations to investigate binary mixtures of metal atoms M and M′ in (Li)MyM'1-yPO4 olivine phosphates. We determine the formation energy for various stoichiometries of different binary combinations of metals for the cases of full lithiation and delithiation. Systematic screening of all combinations of Fe and Mn with elements of the 3d transition-metal (TM) series allows us to identify trends with average band filling and atomic size. We also included compounds that verify the observed relations or that were discussed as cathode materials, particularly Ni-Co, V-Cu and V-Ni, as well as combinations with 4d TMs (Fe-Zr, Fe-Mo, Fe-Ag) and with Mg (Fe-Mg and Ni-Mg). Based on our DFT calculations for each compound, we estimate the volume change during intercalation, the intercalation voltage, the energy density and the thermal stability with respect to reaction with oxygen. Our calculations indicate that the energy density of the binary TM phosphates increases with average band filling while the thermal stability of the compounds decreases. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd.

The distribution of liquid 4He in different types of confinements-adsorbing and nonadsorbing aerogel on the basis of silicon dioxide SiO2 and an absorbing homogeneous strand-has been studied using the density functional theory. It has been demonstrated that the helium atoms tend to be adsorbed on the concave aerogel surface. It has been shown that, in the confinement with fractional mass dimension within certain scales, liquid helium also has a fractional mass dimension within these scales. The dependence of the energy of liquid helium on the number of atoms has been studied for different types of adsorbing surfaces. It has been established that the specific energy of liquid helium behaves differently in the cases of attractive and unattractive potentials with decreasing number of particles. This indicates that the system under consideration is nonextensive. Thus, the necessity of taking into account the surface effects and the fractional mass dimension in the studies of the properties of liquid helium in the restricted space geometry has been demonstrated. © 2013 Pleiades Publishing, Inc.

Materials science is a highly interdisciplinary field. It is devoted to the understanding of the relationship between (a) fundamental physical and chemical properties governing processes at the atomistic scale with (b) typically macroscopic properties required of materials in engineering applications. For many materials, this relationship is not only determined by chemical composition, but strongly governed by microstructure. The latter is a consequence of carefully selected process conditions (e.g., mechanical forming and annealing in metallurgy or epitaxial growth in semiconductor technology). A key task of computational materials science is to unravel the often hidden composition-structure-property relationships using computational techniques. The present paper does not aim to give a complete review of all aspects of materials science. Rather, we will present the key concepts underlying the computation of selected material properties and discuss the major classes of materials to which they are applied. Specifically, our focus will be on methods used to describe single or polycrystalline bulk materials of semiconductor, metal or ceramic form. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Segregation and precipitation of second phases in metals and metallic alloys is an important phenomenon that has a strong influence on the mechanical properties of the material. Models exist that describe the growth of coherent, semi-coherent and incoherent precipitates. One important parameter of these models is the energy of the interface between matrix and precipitate. In this work we apply ab initio density functional theory calculations to obtain this parameter and to understand how it depends on chemical composition and mechanical strain at the interface. Our example is a metastable Mo-C phase, the body-centred tetragonal structure, which exists as a semi-coherent precipitate in body-centred cubic molybdenum. The interface of this precipitate is supposed to change from coherent to semi-coherent during the growth of the precipitate. We predict the critical thickness of the precipitate by calculating the different contributions to a semi-coherent interface energy by means of ab initio density functional theory calculations. The parameters in our model include the elastic strain energy stored in the precipitate, as well as a misfit dislocation energy that depends on the dislocation core width and the dislocation spacing. Our predicted critical thickness agrees well with experimental observations. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd.

A quantum point contact (QPC) is a basic nanometre-scale electronic device: a short and narrow transport channel between two electron reservoirs. In clean channels, electron transport is ballistic and the conductance is then quantized as a function of channel width with plateaux at integer multiples of 2e 2/h (where e is the electron charge and h is Planck's constant). This can be understood in a picture where the electron states are propagating waves, without the need to account for electron-electron interactions. Quantized conductance could thus be the signature of ultimate control over nanoscale electron transport. However, even studies with the cleanest QPCs generically show significant anomalies in the quantized conductance traces, and there is consensus that these result from electron many-body effects. Despite extensive experimental and theoretical studies, understanding these anomalies is an open problem. Here we report that the many-body effects have their origin in one or more spontaneously localized states that emerge from Friedel oscillations in the electron charge density within the QPC channel. These localized states will have electron spins associated with them, and the Kondo effect-related to electron transport through such localized electron spins-contributes to the formation of the many-body state. We present evidence for such localization, with Kondo effects of odd or even character, directly reflecting the parity of the number of localized states; the evidence is obtained from experiments with length-tunable QPCs that show a periodic modulation of the many-body properties with Kondo signatures that alternate between odd and even Kondo effects. Our results are of importance for assessing the role of QPCs in more complex hybrid devices and for proposals for spintronic and quantum information applications. In addition, our results show that tunable QPCs offer a versatile platform for investigating many-body effects in nanoscale systems, with the ability to probe such physics at the level of a single site. © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

Water clusters have attracted a lot of attention as prototype systems to study hydrogen bonded molecular aggregates but also to gain deeper insights into the properties of liquid water, the solvent of life. All these studies depend on an accurate description of the atomic interactions and countless potentials have been proposed in the literature in the past decades to represent the potential-energy surface (PES) of water. Many of these potentials employ drastic approximations like rigid water monomers and fixed point charges, while on the other hand also several attempts have been made to derive very accurate PESs by fitting data obtained in high-level electronic structure calculations. In recent years artificial neural networks (NNs) have been established as a powerful tool to construct high-dimensional PESs of a variety of systems, but to date no full-dimensional NN PES for water has been reported. Here, we present NN potentials for water clusters containing two to six water molecules trained to density functional theory (DFT) data employing two different exchange-correlation functionals, PBE and RPBE. In contrast to other potentials fitted to first principles data, these NN potentials are not based on a truncated many-body expansion of the energy but consider the interactions between all water molecules explicitly. For both functionals an excellent agreement with the underlying DFT calculations has been found with binding energy errors of only about 1%.© by Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, München.

Phase change materials are of great interest as active layers in rewritable optical disks and novel electronic nonvolatile memories. These applications rest on a fast and reversible transformation between the amorphous and crystalline phases upon heating, taking place on the nanosecond time scale. In this work, we investigate the microscopic origin of the fast crystallization process by means of large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of the phase change compound GeTe. To this end, we use an interatomic potential generated from a Neural Network fitting of a large database of ab initio energies. We demonstrate that in the temperature range of the programming protocols of the electronic memories (500-700 K), nucleation of the crystal in the supercooled liquid is not rate-limiting. In this temperature range, the growth of supercritical nuclei is very fast because of a large atomic mobility, which is, in turn, the consequence of the high fragility of the supercooled liquid and the associated breakdown of the Stokes-Einstein relation between viscosity and diffusivity. © 2013 American Chemical Society.

The equilibrium structure including the network of hydrogen bonds of an α-chitin crystal is determined combining density-functional theory (DFT), self-consistent DFT-based tight-binding (SCC-DFTB), and empirical forcefield molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Based on the equilibrium geometry several possible crystal conformations (local energy minima) have been identified and related to hydrogen bond patterns. Our results provide new insight and allow to resolve the contradicting α-chitin structural models proposed by various experiments. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Magnesium-yttrium alloys show significantly improved room temperature ductility when compared with pure Mg. We study this interesting phenomenon theoretically at the atomic scale employing quantum-mechanical (so-called ab initio) and atomistic modeling methods. Specifically, we have calculated generalized stacking fault energies for five slip systems in both elemental magnesium (Mg) and Mg-Y alloys using (i) density functional theory and (ii) a set of embedded-atom-method (EAM) potentials. These calculations predict that the addition of yttrium results in a reduction in the unstable stacking fault energy of basal slip systems. Specifically in the case of an I2 stacking fault, the predicted reduction of the stacking fault energy due to Y atoms was verified by experimental measurements. We find a similar reduction for the stable stacking fault energy of the non-basal slip system. On the other hand, other energies along this particular γ-surface profile increase with the addition of Y. In parallel to our quantum-mechanical calculations, we have also developed a new EAM Mg-Y potential and thoroughly tested its performance. The comparison of quantum-mechanical and atomistic results indicates that the new potential is suitable for future large-scale atomistic simulations. © IOP Publishing and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.

The crystal and molecular structure of (E)-N,N′- dicyclohexylacetamidine (1) is described. Crystalline material of 1 was obtained by sublimation. Single-crystal X-ray analysis revealed a centrosymmetric triclinic structure (space group P1̄) with six molecules in the asymmetric unit (Z′ = 6). The six crystallographically distinct molecules all exhibit an E-syn structure, but differ in the orientation of the cyclohexyl groups about the central acetamidine moiety. In the crystal, the molecules form polymeric helices via NH⋯N hydrogen bonds. The crystal structure comprises two crystallographically distinct helices of opposite handedness (P and M form). The characterisation of 1 in the solid-state is augmented by powder X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy and thermal analysis. Density functional theory (DFT) structure optimisation and frequency calculation were performed at the B3LYP/cc-pVTZ level. The DFT results for the isolated molecule are compared with the experimental results for the solid-state. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Porous carbon and carbide materials with different structures were characterized using adsorption of nitrogen at 77.4 K before and after preadsorption of n-nonane. The selective blocking of the microporosity with n-nonane shows that ordered mesoporous silicon carbide material (OM-SiC) is almost exclusively mesoporous whereas the ordered mesoporous carbon CMK-3 contains a significant amount of micropores (∼25%). The insertion of micropores into OM-SiC using selective extraction of silicon by hot chlorine gas leads to the formation of ordered mesoporous carbide-derived carbon (OM-CDC) with a hierarchical pore structure and significantly higher micropore volume as compared to CMK-3, whereas a CDC material from a nonporous precursor is exclusively microporous. Volumes of narrow micropores, calculated by adsorption of carbon dioxide at 273 K, are in linear correlation with the volumes blocked by n-nonane. Argon adsorption measurements at 87.3 K allow for precise and reliable calculation of the pore size distribution of the materials using density functional theory (DFT) methods. © 2013 American Chemical Society.

Constant COx-free H2 production from the catalytic decomposition of ammonia could be achieved over a high-surface-area molybdenum carbide catalyst prepared by a temperature-programmed reduction-carburization method. The fresh and used catalyst was characterized by N2 adsorption/desorption, powder X-ray diffraction, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and electron energy-loss spectroscopy at different stages. Observed deactivation (in the first 15 h) of the high-surface-area carbide during the reaction was ascribed to considerable reduction of the specific surface area due to nitridation of the carbide under the reaction conditions. Theoretical calculations confirm that the N atoms tend to occupy subsurface sites, leading to the formation of nitride under an NH3 atmosphere. The relatively high rate of reaction (30 mmol/((g of cat.) min)) observed for the catalytic decomposition of NH3 is ascribed to highly energetic sites (twin boundaries, stacking faults, steps, and defects) which are observed in both the molybdenum carbide and nitride samples. The prevalence of such sites in the as-synthesized material results in a much higher H2 production rate in comparison with that for previously reported Mo-based catalysts. © 2013 American Chemical Society.

Electrochemically driven "intercalation" of Cu into Te was used to prepare Cu2-xTe (0.2 < x ≤ 2) thin films and accurately control the composition of the resulting samples. A thorough theoretical analysis of the system using density functional theory (DFT) calculations showed that in the absence of external electric fields the driving forces for Cu atoms to move into the subsurface layers of the Te electrodes depend on the surface coverage of copper atoms. The Cu atoms tend to preferentially occupy the subsurface layers in the telluride films. The effective electric charge on Cu atoms inside the Te-electrodes is positive. These effective charge differences with respect to pure Cu and pure Te are only 0.2 e-. Scanning Kelvin probe (SKP), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and electrochemical techniques were used to characterise the surface status of the obtained samples. Both, DFT-calculated work function differences and the SKP-measured contact potential differences (CPD) change non-linearly with the variation of the film composition. Interfacial (solid/liquid) properties evaluated using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy depend on the nominal composition of the samples and display an abrupt change that correlates with a large change in the work function and CPD. While the proposed electrochemical synthetic route can efficiently and accurately control the composition of the Cu2-xTe thin films, SKP-measurements performed under close to ambient conditions in combination with DFT calculations can provide a promising tool to link fundamental surface properties and parameters which define the interface between solids and liquids. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2013.

In order to investigate the thermodynamic driving force for the experimentally observed accumulation of C in ferritic layers of severely plastically deformed pearlitic wires, the stabilities of C interstitials in ferrite and of C vacancies in cementite are investigated as a function of uniaxial stain, using density-functional theory. In the presence of an applied strain along [1 1 0] or [1 1 1], the C interstitial in ferrite is significantly stabilized, while the C vacancy in cementite is moderately destabilized by the corresponding strain states in cementite [1 0 0] and ([0 1 0]). The enhanced stabilization of the C interstitial gives rise to an increase in the C concentration within the ferritic layers by up to two orders of magnitude. Our results thus suggest that in addition to the generally assumed non-equilibrium, dislocation-based mechanism, there is also a strain-induced thermodynamic driving force for the experimentally observed accumulation of C in ferrite. © 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The fundamental importance of water for many chemical processes has motivated the development of countless efficient but approximate water potentials for large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, from simple empirical force fields to very sophisticated flexible water models. Accurate and generally applicable water potentials should fulfill a number of requirements. They should have a quality close to quantum chemical methods, they should explicitly depend on all degrees of freedom including all relevant many-body interactions, and they should be able to describe molecular dissociation and recombination. In this work, we present a high-dimensional neural network (NN) potential for water clusters based on density-functional theory (DFT) calculations, which is constructed using clusters containing up to 10 monomers and is in principle able to meet all these requirements. We investigate the reliability of specific parametrizations employing two frequently used generalized gradient approximation (GGA) exchange-correlation functionals, PBE and RPBE, as reference methods. We find that the binding energy errors of the NN potentials with respect to DFT are significantly lower than the typical uncertainties of DFT calculations arising from the choice of the exchange-correlation functional. Further, we examine the role of van der Waals interactions, which are not properly described by GGA functionals. Specifically, we incorporate the D3 scheme suggested by Grimme (J. Chem. Phys. 2010, 132, 154104) in our potentials and demonstrate that it can be applied to GGA-based NN potentials in the same way as to DFT calculations without modification. Our results show that the description of small water clusters provided by the RPBE functional is significantly improved if van der Waals interactions are included, while in case of the PBE functional, which is well-known to yield stronger binding than RPBE, van der Waals corrections lead to overestimated binding energies. © 2013 American Chemical Society.

The mixed-valence metal-organic framework [Ru3 II,III(btc)2Cl1.5] (Ru-MOF) was synthesized by the controlled SBU approach and characterized by combined powder XRD, XPS, and FTIR methods. The interaction of CO molecules with Ru-MOF was studied by a novel instrumentation for ultra-high-vacuum (UHV) FTIR spectroscopy. The high-quality IR data demonstrate the presence of two different CO species within the framework: a strongly bonded CO showing a low-lying band at 2137 cm-1 and a second CO species at 2171 cm-1 with a lower binding energy. It was found that these IR bands cannot be assigned in a straightforward manner to CO molecules adsorbed on the coordinatively unsaturated RuII site (CUS) and RuIII site connected to an additional Cl- ion for charge compensation. The accurate DFT calculations reveal that the structural and electronic properties of the mixed-valence Ru-MOF are much more complex than expected. One of the Cl- counterions could be transferred to a neighboring paddle-wheel, forming an anionic SBU blocked by two Cl- counterions, whereas the other positively charged paddle-wheel with a Ru2 II,III dimer exposes two "free" CUS, which can bind two CO molecules with different frequencies and binding energies. © 2013 American Chemical Society.

High throughput thin film experiments and first-principles calculations are combined in order to get insight into the relation between finite temperature transformation behavior and structural ground state properties of ternary Fe-Pd-X alloys. In particular, we consider the binding surface, i.e., the energy of the disordered alloy calculated along the Bain path between bcc and fcc which we model by a 108 atom supercell. We compare stoichiometric Fe 75Pd25 with ternary systems, where 4.6% of the Fe atoms were substituted by Cu and Mn, respectively. The computational trends are related to combinatorial experiments on thin film libraries for the systems Fe-Pd-Mn and Fe-Pd-Cu which reveal a systematic evolution of the martensitic start temperature with composition within the relevant concentration range for magnetic shape memory (MSM) applications. Our calculations include atomic relaxations, which were shown to be relevant for a correct description of the structural properties. Furthermore, we find that magnetic excitations can substantially alter the binding surface. The comparison of experimental and theoretical trends indicates that, both, compositional changes and magnetic excitations contribute significantly to the structural stability which may thus be tailored by specifically adding antiferromagnetic components. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Tight-binding models derived from density functional theory potentially provide a systematic approach to the development of accurate and transferable models of multicomponent systems. We introduce a systematic methodology for environmental tight binding in which both the overlap and environmental contributions to the electronic structure are included. The parameters of the model are determined directly from ab initio considerations, thus providing a formal conceptual link to density functional approaches. In order to test the validity of the approach, the model is applied to small clusters of Ni and Co, whose electronic structure is largely determined by the interplay of tightly bound d-valent states and the disperse s-states. We numerically illustrate that it is essential to include environmental contributions in the tight-binding approach in order to reliably reproduce the electronic structure of such clusters. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd.

The performance of materials such as steels, their high strength and formability, is based on an impressive variety of competing mechanisms on the microscopic/atomic scale (e.g. dislocation gliding, solid solution hardening, mechanical twinning or structural phase transformations). Whereas many of the currently available concepts to describe these mechanisms are based on empirical and experimental data, it becomes more and more apparent that further improvement of materials needs to be based on a more fundamental level. Recent progress for methods based on density functional theory (DFT) now makes the exploration of chemical trends, the determination of parameters for phenomenological models and the identification of new routes for the optimization of steel properties feasible. A major challenge in applying these methods to a true materials design is, however, the inclusion of temperature-driven effects on the desired properties. Therefore, a large range of computational tools has been developed in order to improve the capability and accuracy of first-principles methods in determining free energies. These combine electronic, vibrational and magnetic effects as well as structural defects in an integrated approach. Based on these simulation tools, one is now able to successfully predict mechanical and thermodynamic properties of metals with a hitherto not achievable accuracy. © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd.

A new thermodynamic evaluation of the well-known Mg-Si system is presented with the aim to resolve persistent uncertainties in the Gibbs energy of its only compound, Mg 2Si. For this purpose the heat capacity and enthalpy of melting of Mg 2Si were measured by differential scanning calorimetry. Using finite temperature density functional theory and the quasiharmonic approximation, thermodynamic properties of Mg 2Si were additionally calculated up to and above its melting temperature. Using these new data, in particular the heat capacity, the Mg-Si system was evaluated thermodynamically with the CALPHAD method leading to a thermodynamic description of the system within narrow bounds. In contrast to several previous evaluations there is no problem with an inverted miscibility gap in the liquid. Although present enthalpy of melting data turned out to be inconsistent with other data in this system, the new evaluation accurately describes all other available data in this system. In particular the Gibbs energy of Mg 2Si can now be considered reliably described.© 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We present a scale-bridging approach for modeling the integral elastic response of polycrystalline composite that is based on a multi-disciplinary combination of (i) parameter-free first-principles calculations of thermodynamic phase stability and single-crystal elastic stiffness; and (ii) homogenization schemes developed for polycrystalline aggregates and composites. The modeling is used as a theory-guided bottom-up materials design strategy and applied to Ti-Nb alloys as promising candidates for biomedical implant applications. The theoretical results (i) show an excellent agreement with experimental data and (ii) reveal a decisive influence of the multi-phase character of the polycrystalline composites on their integral elastic properties. The study shows that the results based on the density functional theory calculations at the atomistic level can be directly used for predictions at the macroscopic scale, effectively scale-jumping several orders of magnitude without using any empirical parameters. © 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

An ultimate goal of material scientists is the prediction of the thermodynamics of tailored materials solely based on first principles methods. The present work reviews recent methodological developments and advancements providing thereby an up-to-date basis for such an approach. Key ideas and the performance of these methods are discussed with respect to the Heusler alloy Ni-Mn-Ga - a prototype magnetic shape-memory alloy of great technological interest for various applications. Ni-Mn-Ga shows an interesting and complex sequence of phase transitions, rendering it a significant theoretical challenge for any first principles approach. The primary goal of this investigation is to determine the composition dependence of the martensitic transition temperature in these alloys. Quasiharmonic phonons and the magnetic exchange interactions as well as the delicate interplay of vibrational and magnetic excitations are taken into account employing density functional theory. Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

A topological insulator is an unusual state of quantum matter which, while being an insulator in the bulk, has topologically protected electronic states at the surface. These states could be used in different applications, such as spintronics and quantum computing. However, it is difficult to distinguish the surface and bulk contributions into transport properties, such as conductivity. In order to distinguish surface and bulk contributions an external pressure could be applied. In the present work we have performed ab initio calculations of topological insulator Bi2Se3 under the stress for bulk and surface models. Calculations have been made by means of density functional theory within generalized gradient approximation, the spin-orbit interaction was taken into account as well. It was found that topologically protected surface states remains robust under the stress. Moreover, pressure tends to increase the Fermi velocity of surface electrons, as well as increase electronic density of states at the bottom of the conduction band of the bulk of Bi2Se 3. Thus, the results of ab initio calculations could complement the experimental investigations of high pressure transport properties of topological insulators. The experimentally detected increase of carrier density could be related to the effects of the bulk.

The electronic states of aqueous species can mix with the extended states of the solvent if they are close in energy to the band edges of water. Using density functional theory-based molecular dynamics simulation, we show that this is the case for OH- and Cl-. The effect is, however, badly exaggerated by the generalized gradient approximation leading to systematic underestimation of redox potentials and spurious nonlinearity in the solvent reorganization. Drawing a parallel to charged defects in wide gap solid oxides, we conclude that misalignment of the valence band of water is the main source of error turning the redox levels of OH- and Cl- in resonant impurity states. On the other hand, the accuracy of energies of levels corresponding to strongly negative redox potentials is acceptable. We therefore predict that mixing of the vertical attachment level of CO2 and the unoccupied states of water is a real effect. © 2012 American Chemical Society.

Amorphous and micro-crystalline silicon (a-Si:H, μc-Si) are key materials for resource-saving thin-film solar cells. However, the efficiency of such devices is severely limited by light-induced Si dangling-bond defects, which can be detected by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). We report density-functional theory calculations on a set of random dangling bonds created in supercell models of a-Si:H and compare calculated hyperfine and g-tensor distributions to the ones obtained from a recent multi-frequency EPR spectral analysis. Our results show that the g-tensor does not exhibit axial symmetry as has been previously assumed, but is clearly rhombic. The hyperfine coupling to the undercoordinated Si atom, on the other hand, is almost perfectly axial. This apparent discrepancy in the symmetry properties is shown to be a consequence of the underlying coupling mechanisms and how these are influenced by structural disorder. However, the hyperfine distribution calculated from our random models underestimates the experimentally observed 30% red-shift when going from c-Si to a-Si:H. We suggest that only a subset of possible dangling-bond configurations is observed in experiment. We discuss plausible mechanisms that would give rise to such a selection, and new experiments to test these hypotheses. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We present a first-principles density functional theory study of domain wall structures in tetragonal BaTiO 3 and its nanoparticles. For the bulk material the domain wall profiles, their width and their formation energy are computed and preliminary investigations on thin BaTiO 3 films up to 4 monolayers and small nanoparticles of 15.8 have been performed. While the 180 wall is atomically sharp, we find a lower bond for the 90 wall width of 16.5 . Although, no ferroelectric state can be stabilized neither in films nor in the nanoparticles of this small size, a large local polarization exits in both cases. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

In this work, we present a highly generalized implementation of multiband k · p models. We have achieved a high efficiency of our approach by incorporating it in a planewave framework within the Density Functional Theory package S/PHI/nX. To demonstrate the flexibility and applicability of our code, we have chosen two example studies that are directly accessible with the standard eight-band k · p model. By employing a 14-band k · p model for the description of pyramidal InAs/GaAs quantum dots (QDs), we show that this model is able to accomodate for the correct symmetry of the underlying zincblende lattice, which is not reflected in the standard eight-band model. Our second example provides a description of site-controlled (111)-oriented InGaAs/GaAs QDs. The extremely small aspect ratio of these QDs makes a description using conventional k · p Hamiltonians computationally highly expensive.We have therefore rotated the standard eight-band Hamiltonian, to suit the description of these systems. The studies of electronic properties of the above mentioned model systems demonstrate the efficiency and flexibility of our approach. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2011.

We investigate the impact of uniaxial strain on atomic shifts, dipolar interactions, polarization and electric permittivity in TiO 2 (rutile) by using two different implementations of density functional theory. It is shown that calculations using the Vienna ab inito simulation package (VASP) and the plane-wave self-consistent field method (PWscf) yield qualitatively the same atomic relaxations and ferroelectric trends under strain. The phonon dispersion curves of unstrained and strained TiO 2 (rutile) obtained by employing the linear response method confirm previous calculations of the giant LO-TO splitting and the appearance of soft polar modes. A second order phase transition into a ferroelectric phase with polarization along (110) appears under expansive strain in (110) direction.

We report Density Functional Theory results on FeAl and FeZn intermetallics and Fe, Zn and Al solute atoms. The formation energies of fully relaxed intermetallic geometries were determined, as well as solution energies of the three elements in host lattices of the other two elements. Since it is know that the outcome of the magnetic states of some FeAl intermetallics and Fe solutes in Al depends on subtle details of how the calculations are carried out, we have determined many of our results with two different parameterisations, PBE and PBEsol, so see how the parameterisation influences the results. The relaxed intermetallic geometries are in good agreement with experimental results, with PBEsol calculations resulting in slightly smaller geometries than PBE calculations (0.7-2.1%). Intermetallic formation energies fall within ranges of experimental results where available, and are in excellent or reasonable agreement with other DFT results, except for the FeAl 2 phase. For this phase a structure revision was recently suggested and the heat of formation of the newly suggested structure is 0.1 eV/atom lower than for the long-accepted structure. The formation energies of Fe aluminides are an order of magnitude more negative than those of FeZn intermetallics. Most of the calculated magnetic states of the intermetallics are at odds with experimental results. However, the intermetallic formation energies are often not strongly affected by this. Fe/Al solute systems have the most negative solution energies. All other solution energies are positive and smaller in absolute value than the Fe/Al solution energies. Solution energies were all some tenths of eV. Where comparisons could be made, calculated and experimental results differed by some hundredths of eV. The magnetic moment found on an Fe solute in Al is at odds with experimental results. As with FeAl, the outcome of the magnetic state subtly depends on the details of how calculations were performed and has little energetic effect. Lattice relaxation around solute atoms is mostly in agreement with simple atomic size considerations. The slight relaxation of Al neighbours away from a Zn solute is at odds with this pattern, and also with experimental results. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Structure-property relations of monoclinic petalite, LiAlSi 4O 10, were determined by experiment and atomistic modeling based on density functional theory. The elastic stiffness coefficients were measured between room temperature and 570K using a combination of the plate-resonance technique and resonant ultrasound spectroscopy. The thermal expansion was studied between 100 and 740K by means of dilatometry. The heat capacity between 2 and 398K has been obtained by microcalorimetry using a quasi-adiabatic calorimeter. The experimentally determined elastic stiffness coefficients were employed to benchmark the results of density functional theory based model calculations. The values in the two data sets agreed to within a few GPa and the anisotropy was very well reproduced. The atomistic model was then employed to predict electric field gradients, the lattice dynamics and thermodynamic properties. The theoretical charge density was analyzed to investigate the bonding between atoms. © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd.

We have used density functional theory calculations to study non-periodic model systems for the ubiquitous layer-pillar metal organic frameworks built from paddle-wheel building blocks. Experimentally, these porous materials show nearly identical structures for both copper and zinc forming the paddle-wheel, but differ depending on the type of the metal center in their properties. Our theoretical results clearly reveal orbital directing effects for the d 9 Cu(ii) center, enforcing a square planar conformation, to be the main reason for the difference in contrast to the flexible d 10 Zn(ii) system. Surprisingly, this difference is directly visible in the structure of the bare vertex model without axial ligands, whereas in the case of pyridine coordination both copper and zinc complexes are structurally nearly indistinguishable. However, in the vibrational normal modes the higher degree of flexibility for the zinc-based systems is still noticeable, explaining the higher flexibility of the corresponding periodic MOFs. © 2012 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

The thermochemical constants for the oxidation of tyrosine and tryptophan through proton coupled electron transfer in aqueous solution have been computed applying a recently developed density functional theory (DFT) based molecular dynamics method for reversible elimination of protons and electrons. This method enables us to estimate the solvation free energy of a proton (H+) in a periodic model system from the free energy for the deprotonation of an aqueous hydronium ion (H3O+). Using the computed solvation free energy of H+ as reference, the deprotonation and oxidation free energies of an aqueous species can be converted to pKa and normal hydrogen electrode (NHE) potentials. This conversion requires certain thermochemical corrections which were first presented in a similar study of the oxidation of hydrobenzoquinone [J. Cheng, M. Sulpizi, and M. Sprik, J. Chem. Phys. 131, 154504 (2009)]10.1063/1.3250438. Taking a different view of the thermodynamic status of the hydronium ion, these thermochemical corrections are revised in the present work. The key difference with the previous scheme is that the hydronium is now treated as an intermediate in the transfer of the proton from solution to the gas-phase. The accuracy of the method is assessed by a detailed comparison of the computed pKa, NHE potentials and dehydrogenation free energies to experiment. As a further application of the technique, we have analyzed the role of the solvent in the oxidation of tyrosine by the tryptophan radical. The free energy change computed for this hydrogen atom transfer reaction is very similar to the gas-phase value, in agreement with experiment. The molecular dynamics results however, show that the minimal solvent effect on the reaction free energy is accompanied by a significant reorganization of the solvent. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.

The I1 intrinsic basal stacking faults (BSFs) are acknowledged as the principal defects observed on {112̄0} (a-plane) and {11̄00} (m-plane) grown GaN. Their importance is established by recent experimental results, which correlate the partial dislocations (PDs) bounding I1 BSFs to the luminescence characteristics of GaN. PDs are also found to play a critical role in the alleviation of misfit strain in hetero-epitaxially grown nonpolar and semipolar films. In the present study, the energetics and the electronic structure of twelve edge and mixed 1/6〈202̄3〉 PD configurations are investigated by first principles calculations. The specific PD cores of the dislocation loop bounding the I1 BSF are identified for III-rich and N-rich growth conditions. The core structures of PDs induce multiple shallow and deep states, attributed to the low coordinated core atoms, indicating that the cores are electrically active. In contrast to edge type threading dislocations no strain induced states are found. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.

In order to simplify the development and implementation process of quantum mechanical algorithms, we developed a set of object-oriented C++ libraries which can exploit modern computer architectures. The libraries are characterized as follows: (i) State-of-the-art computer science techniques have been applied or developed in this work to provide language elements to express algebraic expressions efficiently on modern computer platforms. (ii) Quantum mechanical algorithms are crucial in the field of materials research. The new libraries support the Dirac notation to implement such algorithms in the native language of physicists. (iii) The libraries are completed by elements to express equations of motions efficiently which is required for implementing structural algorithms such as molecular dynamics. Based on these libraries we introduce the DFT program package S/PHI/nX. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We present a rigorous bottom-up approach for the derivation of the electronic structure part of tight-binding (TB) models from density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The approach is based on a simultaneous optimization and projection of atomic-like orbitals on self-consistent DFT wave functions and is universally applicable to elements and compounds in arbitrary structural arrangements. The quality and transferability of the derived TB bond and overlap integrals are demonstrated for the examples of a covalent semiconductor (carbon), a transition metal (titanium), and a binary compound with mixed metallic-covalent bonding (TiC). The method can serve as a transparent and physically justified coarse-graining scheme for the construction of nonorthogonal and orthogonal TB total-energy models as well as the closely related bond-order potentials. © 2011 American Physical Society.

The effect of hydrostatic strain and of interstitial hydrogen on the elastic properties of α-iron is investigated using ab initio density-functional theory calculations. We find that the cubic elastic constants and the polycrystalline elastic moduli to a good approximation decrease linearly with increasing hydrogen concentration. This net strength reduction can be partitioned into a strengthening electronic effect which is overcome by a softening volumetric effect. The calculated hydrogen-dependent elastic constants are used to determine the polycrystalline elastic moduli and anisotropic shear moduli. For the key slip planes in α-iron, [11̄0] and [112̄], we find a shear modulus reduction of approximately 1.6% per at.% H. © 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ab initio based simulations have been proven in the past to be and still are a valuable and indispensable tool in the field of III-nitride semiconductors. They have been successfully used to explain, describe and guide growth and characterization experiments and to address a large variety of material problems at different length scales. In the present report we review on five selected topics which span different length scales, various method developments, and diverse material properties that have been theoretically addressed within the research group "Physics of nitride-based, nanostructured, light emitting devices." Schematic representation of theoretical modeling in synergy with experiment. Left: Ab initio calculated potential energy surface for adatom diffusion on the side facets of a GaN nanowire [theory from L. Lymperakis et al., Phys. Rev. B 79, 241308 (2009), SEM image from T. Aschenbrenner et al., Nanotechnology 20, 075604 (2009)]. Right: Electrostatic potential in a QD calculated by Poisson solver [theory from O. Marquardt et al., J. Appl. Phys. 106, 083707 (2009), HRTEM image from A. Pretorius et al., J. Cryst. Growth 310, 748 (2008)]. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

In this article, we discuss how microstructural length and time scales may be reached in atomistic simulations. We bridge from electronic properties to properties of materials by employing a systematic coarse graining of the electronic structure to effective interatomic interactions. In combination with extended time scale simulations the elementary processes of microstructural evolution may then be described. We present our approach to the derivation of tight-binding models from density functional theory, the characterization of the interatomic interaction using bond-order potentials and extended time scale simulations based on adaptive kinetic Monte Carlo. Applications to structural stability in iron, internal interfaces in tungsten and hydrogen diffusion in iron are discussed briefly and relate our approach to Manfred Fähnle's work. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

We present a highly flexible, plane-wave based formulation of continuum elasticity and multiband k·p-formalism to study the elastic and electronic properties of semiconductor nanostructures. This approach has been implemented in the framework of the density functional theory (DFT) software library S/Phi/nX [1] and allows the investigation of arbitrary-shaped nanostructures such as quantum wells, wires and dots consisting of various materials. Moreover, our approach grants the flexibility to employ user-generated k·p Hamiltonians suited to the requirements of the study regarding accuracy and computational costs. © 2011 IEEE.

We have employed density functional theory to determine the temperature dependence of the intrinsic stability of an infinite poly-L-alanine helix. The most relevant helix types, i.e., the - and the 310 - helix, and several unfolded conformations, which serve as reference for the stability analysis, have been included. For the calculation of the free energies for the various chain conformations we have explicitly included both, harmonic and anharmonic contributions. The latter have been calculated by means of a thermodynamic integration approach employing stochastic Langevin molecular dynamics, which is shown to provide a dramatic increase in the computational efficiency as compared to commonly employed deterministic molecular dynamics schemes. Employing this approach we demonstrate that the anharmonic part of the free energy amounts to the order of 0.1-0.4 kcal/mol per peptide unit for all analysed conformations. Although small, the anharmonic contribution stabilizes the helical conformations with respect to the fully extended structure. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.

The phase diagrams of magnetic shape-memory Heusler alloys, in particular, ternary Ni-Mn-Z and quarternary (Pt, Ni)-Mn-Z alloys with Z = Ga, Sn, have been addressed by density functional theory and Monte Carlo simulations. Finite temperature free energy calculations show that the phonon contribution stabilizes the high-temperature austenite structure while at low temperatures magnetism and the band Jahn-Teller effect favor the modulated monoclinic 14M or the nonmodulated tetragonal structure. The substitution of Ni by Pt leads to a series of magnetic shape-memory alloys with very similar properties to Ni-Mn-Ga but with a maximal eigenstrain of 14. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.

The solubility of carbon in α-Fe as a function of lattice strain and in the vicinity of the ∑5(310)[001] symmetrical tilt grain boundary is calculated with ab initio methods based on density-functional theory (DFT). The results are compared to four different empirical potentials: the embedded-atom method (EAM) potentials of Lau et al. [1], Ruda et al. [2] and Hepburn et al. [3], and the modified embedded-atom method (MEAM) potential of Lee [4]. The results confirm that the solubility of carbon in body-centered-cubic (bcc) Fe increases under local volume expansion and provide quantitative data for the excess enthalpy to be used in thermodynamic databases. According to our study the excess enthalpy obtained from DFT is more strain-sensitive than the ones obtained from the tested empirical potentials. The comparison of the applied methods furthermore reveals that among the empirical potentials the MEAM is most appropriate to describe the solubility of C in bcc Fe under strain. The differences between the four empirical potentials stem from different parameterizations of the EAM potentials and, in the case of the MEAM, from the altogether different formalism that also includes angular dependent terms in the binding energy. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Diffusion and decay of alloyed Cu/Ag islands are investigated in the size range from 1 to 40nm2 on Ag(100) at room temperature with fast-scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory. While islands at sizes above 7nm2 show the diffusion and decay behavior expected for dynamics based on single atom hopping, islands smaller than 4nm2 diffuse faster and decay slower than predicted by standard theory. This anomalous behavior at unexpected large island sizes is related to a size dependent dealloying of the Cu/Ag islands. © 2011 American Physical Society.

A combined theoretical and experimental study of thermodynamical, structural, and elastic properties of Fe3Al-based ternary alloys is presented. The theoretical part is based on a scale-bridging, multi-disciplinary combination of (i) thermodynamic aspects of the site preference and (ii) elastic stiffness data for substitutional ternary elements in Fe3Al single crystals, as determined by parameter-free first-principles calculations, and (iii) Hershey's homogenization model for the polycrystalline aggregates within the frame of linear elasticity theory. The approach was employed in order to explore the relation between chemical composition and both structural and elastic properties of Fe3Al ternary alloys containing the selected substituents (Ti, V, W, Cr and Si). The ab initio calculations employ density-functional theory (DFT) and the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). The determined elastic constants are used to calculate the elastic moduli, such as the Young's and bulk modulus. The theoretical results are compared to both literature data and novel impulse excitation measurements. Specifically, for Fe3Al-Ti alloys with low to medium Ti concentrations, an unexpected non-linear compositional dependence of the polycrystalline Young's modulus was found experimentally. The origin of this behavior is analyzed and discussed based on our theoretical results. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In this work we demonstrate how second-order continuum elasticity theory and an eight-band k ṡ p model can be implemented in an existing density functional theory (DFT) plane-wave code. The plane-wave formulation of these two formalisms allows for an accurate and efficient description of elastic and electronic properties of semiconductor nanostructures such as quantum dots, wires, and films. Gradient operators that are computationally expensive in a real-space formulation can be calculated much more efficiently in reciprocal space. The accuracy can be directly controlled by the plane-wave cutoff. Furthermore, minimization schemes typically available in plane-wave DFT codes can be applied straightforwardly with only a few modifications to a plane-wave formulation of these continuum models. As an example, the elastic and electronic properties of a III-nitride quantum dot system are calculated. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Arthropoda, which represent nearly 80% of all known animal species, are protected by an exoskeleton formed by their cuticle. The cuticle represents a hierarchically structured multifunctional biocomposite based on chitin and proteins. Some groups, such as Crustacea, reinforce the load-bearing parts of their cuticle with calcite. As the calcite sometimes contains Mg it was speculated that Mg may have a stiffening impact on the mechanical properties of the cuticle (Becker et al., Dalton Trans. (2005) 1814). Motivated by these facts, we present a theoretical parameter-free quantum-mechanical study of the phase stability and structural and elastic properties of Mg-substituted calcite crystals. The Mg-substitutions were chosen as examples of states that occur in complex chemical environments typical for biological systems in which calcite crystals contain impurities, the role of which is still the topic of debate. Density functional theory calculations of bulk (Ca,Mg)CO3 were performed employing 30-atom supercells within the generalized gradient approximation as implemented in the Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package. Based on the calculated thermodynamic results, low concentrations of Mg atoms are predicted to be stable in calcite crystals in agreement with experimental findings. Examining the structural characteristics, Mg additions nearly linearly reduce the volume of substituted crystals. The predicted elastic bulk modulus results reveal that the Mg substitution nearly linearly stiffens the calcite crystals. Due to the quite large size-mismatch of Mg and Ca atoms, Mg substitution results in local distortions such as off-planar tilting of the CO32- group. © 2010 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The experimentally observed anomalous compositional dependence of the lattice constant of Fe-Al crystals has been theoretically investigated employing density functional theory (DFT) within the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). The formation energies, equilibrium volumes and magnetic states have been determined for a dense set of different aluminium concentrations and a large variety of atomic configurations. The spin-polarized calculations for Fe-rich compounds reproduce very well the anomalous lattice-constant behavior in contrast to both the nonmagnetic and fixed-spin-moment calculations that result in nearly linear trends without any anomaly. We thus identify the change in magnetism of iron atoms as caused by an increasing number of Al atoms in the first coordination spheres to be the decisive driving force of the anomalous behavior. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The deleterious low-temperature tetragonal phases in prototypical Pt-based superalloys have variously been reported as taking the tI16-U3Si (DOc), tI16-Ir3Si (DOc′) and tP16-Pt3Ga structure-types in contrast to the high-temperature cubic cP4-Cu3Au (L12) phase. We have investigated the relative stability of these four structure-types at absolute zero by using density functional theory. We find that the ground state of stoichiometric Pt3Al is tP16-Pt3Ga and that the other three lattices are mechanically unstable at absolute zero. Experiments are needed to measure the internal displacement parameters of these three competing tetragonal phases. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Studies of generalized stacking fault energy surfaces, or γ-surfaces, provide a convenient and efficient source of information on possible dislocation dissociation mechanisms and favorable glide systems. We carried out an extensive theoretical investigation of the {110}c-surface for three technologically important perovskite oxides SrTiO3, BaTiO 3, and PbTiO3. The calculations were performed using both a highly accurate first-principles density functional theory approach and simple empirical interatomic potentials. The main characteristic features common to all {110} γ-surfaces are the low energy path along the 〈110〉 direction and the existence of a single local energy minimum along this path. This minimum corresponds to an antiphase boundary that has been observed experimentally in dissociated dislocation cores in various perovskites. The energy profiles obtained using the empirical potentials agree qualitatively well with the first-principles results but there are significant quantitative discrepancies. This comparison provides a valuable insight into the quality and limitations of empirical potentials for atomistic simulations of dislocations and other extended defects in these materials. © 2010 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ab initio calculations are becoming increasingly important for designing new alloys as these calculations can accurately predict basic structural, mechanical, and functional properties using only the atomic composition as a basis. In this paper, fundamental physical properties (like formation energies and elastic constants) of a set of bcc Mg-Li and Mg-Li-based compounds are calculated using density functional theory (DFT). These DFT-determined properties are in turn used to calculate engineering parameters such as (i) specific Young's modulus (Y/p) or (ii) shear over bulk modulus ratio (G/B) differentiating between brittle and ductile behavior. These parameters are then used to identify those alloys that have optimal mechanical properties for lightweight structural applications. First, in case of the binary Mg-Li system, an Ashby map containing Y/r versus G/B shows that it is not possible to increase Y/r without simultaneously increasing G/B (i.e., brittleness) by changing only the composition of a binary alloy. In an attempt to bypass such a fundamental materials-design limitation, a set of Mg-Li-X ternaries (X=Ca, Al, Si, Cu, Zn) based on stoichiometric Mg-Li with CsCl structure was studied. It is shown that none of the studied ternary solutes is able to simultaneously improve both specific Young's modulus and ductility. © 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

The formation energy and solubility of hydrogen in magnesium nitride bulk (antibixbyite Mg3 N2) have been studied employing density functional theory in the generalized gradient approximation. The effect of doping and the presence of native defects and complex formation have been taken into account. Our results show that magnesium nitride is a nearly defect-free insulator with insignificant hydrogen-storage capacity. Based on this insight we derive a model that highlights the role of the formation and presence of the parasitic Mg3 N2 inclusions in the activation of p -doped GaN in optoelectronic devices. © 2010 The American Physical Society.

Cementite (Fe3 C) is one of the most common phases in steel. In spite of its importance, thermodynamic investigations, either experimental or theoretical, of cementite are infrequent. In the present work, the thermodynamic properties of cementite are reevaluated and Gibbs energy functions valid from 0 K upwards presented. At high temperature (1000 K and above), the Gibbs energy is practically unchanged compared to previous evaluations. The energy of formation at 0 K was also calculated using density functional theory. This energy of formation (+8 kJ/mol at 0 K) is in reasonable agreement with the present thermodynamic evaluation (+23.5 kJ/mol at 0 K and +27.0 kJ/mol at 298.15 K) and with a solution calorimetric measurement of the enthalpy of formation (+18.8 kJ/mol at 298.15 K). In addition, the heat capacity was calculated theoretically using ab initio data combined with statistical concepts such as the quasiharmonic approximation. The theoretical calculation agrees equally well as the present evaluation with experimental data, but suggests a different weighting of the experimental data. In order to use it directly in the thermodynamic evaluation further modifications in the Fe-C system, primarily of the fcc phase, would be required in order to reproduce phase equilibrium data with sufficient accuracy. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Body centered cubic (bcc) Mg-Li-based alloys are a promising light-weight structural material. In order to tailor the Mg-Li composition with respect to specific industrial requirements, systematic materials-design concepts need to be developed and applied. Quantum-mechanical calculations are increasingly employed when designing new alloys as they accurately predict basic thermodynamic, structural, and functional properties using only the atomic composition as input. We have therefore performed a quantum-mechanical study using density functional theory (DFT) to systematically explore fundamental physical properties of a broad set of bcc MgLi-based compounds. These DFT-determined properties are used to calculate engineering parameters such as (i) the specific Young's modulus (Y/ρ) or (ii) the bulk over shear modulus ratio (B/G) which allow differentiating between brittle and ductile behavior. As we have recently shown, it is not possible to increase both specific Young's modulus, as a measure of strength, and B/G ratio, as a proxy for ductility, by changing only the composition in the binary bcc Mg-Li system. In an attempt to bypass such fundamental materials-design limitations, a large set of MgLi-X substitutional ternaries derived from stoichiometric MgLi with CsCl structure are studied. Motivated by the fact that for Mg-Li alloys (i) 3rd row Si and Al and (ii) 4th row Zn are industrially used as alloying elements, we probe the alloying performance of the 3rd (Na, Al, Si, P, S, Cl) and 4th row transition metal (Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn) elements. The studied solutes offer a variety of properties but none is able to simultaneously improve both specific Young's modulus and ductility. Therefore, in order to explore the alloying performance of yet a broader set of solutes, we predict the bulk modulus of MgX and LiX B2-compounds running over 40 different elements. © 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

In this contribution we review our recently developed method for the calculation of acidity constants from density functional theory based molecular dynamics simulations. The method is based on a half reaction scheme in which protons are formally transferred from solution to the gas phase. The corresponding deprotonation free energies are computed from the vertical energy gaps for insertion or removal of protons. Combined to full proton transfer reactions, the deprotonation energies can be used to estimate relative acidity constants and also the Brønsted pKa when the deprotonation free energy of a hydronium ion is used as a reference. We verified the method by investigating a series of organic and inorganic acids and bases spanning a wide range of pKa values (20 units). The thermochemical corrections for the biasing potentials assisting and directing the insertion are discussed in some detail. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.

We present a scheme to solve the Kohn-Sham equations of density functional theory using orthonormal wave functions and an independent pseudo-Hamiltonian matrix. Our ansatz is based on a direct minimization of the electronic free energy with conjugate-gradient techniques. In contrast to previous approaches, continuous changes in the occupation numbers and subspace rotations are naturally included and allow therefore for exponential convergence. The algorithm is demonstrated for Mo bulk and surfaces. © 2009 The American Physical Society.

The density functional theory based molecular dynamics (DFTMD) method for the computation of redox free energies presented in previous publications and the more recent modification for computation of acidity constants are reviewed. The method uses a half reaction scheme based on reversible insertion/removal of electrons and protons. The proton insertion is assisted by restraining potentials acting as chaperones. The procedure for relating the calculated deprotonation free energies to Brønsted acidities (pKa) and the oxidation free energies to electrode potentials with respect to the normal hydrogen electrode is discussed in some detail. The method is validated in an application to the reduction of aqueous 1,4-benzoquinone. The conversion of hydroquinone to quinone can take place via a number of alternative pathways consisting of combinations of acid dissociations, oxidations, or dehydrogenations. The free energy changes of all elementary steps (ten in total) are computed. The accuracy of the calculations is assessed by comparing the energies of different pathways for the same reaction (Hess's law) and by comparison to experiment. This two-sided test enables us to separate the errors related with the restrictions on length and time scales accessible to DFTMD from the errors introduced by the DFT approximation. It is found that the DFT approximation is the main source of error for oxidation free energies. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.

Combining photoemission and electrochemical data from the literature we argue that the difference between the vertical and adiabatic ionization energy of the aqueous hydroxide anion is 2.9 eV. We then use density functional theory based molecular dynamics to show that the solvent response to ionization is nonlinear. Adding this to the experimental data we predict a 4.1 eV difference between the energy for vertical attachment of an electron to the aqueous hydroxyl radical and the corresponding adiabatic electron affinity. This places the state accepting the electron only 2.2 eV below vacuum or 7.7 eV above the edge of the valence band of water. © 2009 American Chemical Society.