Topotactic synthesis of the overlooked multilayer silicene intercalation compound SrSi2.

Silicene, a 2D honeycomb lattice of Si atoms similar to graphene, is expected to be a platform for nanoelectronics and home to novel quantum phenomena. Unlike graphene, free-standing silicene is notoriously difficult to stabilize, while strong hybridization of silicene with substrates destroys its desirable properties. On the other hand, Dirac cones of silicene are effectively realized in a bulk - stoichiometric ionic multilayer silicene intercalation compound CaSi2. Besides, a number of new 2D silicene-based materials are synthesized employing CaSi2 as a precursor. However, the rather complex atomic structure of CaSi2 and fresh opportunities of physical and chemical breakthroughs drive the search for alternative compounds with silicene networks. Here, a new polymorph of SrSi2 is synthesized, enjoying both the structure of intercalated multilayer silicene and the simplest possible stacking of silicene sheets. The MBE-quality synthesis accomplished on Si(001) and Si(111) surfaces leads to epitaxial films of SrSi2 with orientation controlled by the substrate, as revealed by XRD, RHEED and electron microscopy studies. The structural SrSi2/Si relation is mirrored in the transport properties of the films.

Hydrogen-bond networks in finite ice nanotubes.

An exhaustive analysis of all H-bond networks for finite elements of ice nanotubes formed by up to 32 water molecules (3,660,732 configurations in total) is performed. The results constitute a unique database and demonstrate the H-bond network formation and changes with the growth of the ice nanotube. The statistical analysis shows that H-bonds can be classified according to their structural positions, and there are remarkable dependencies of the cooperativity energy and bond lengths on the system's morphology. The study of low-energy configurations supports the conclusion about the ferroelectric order in ice nanotubes with odd numbers of water molecules in the ring.

Multipole model for the electron group functions method.

Electron groups provide a natural way to introduce local concepts into quantum chemistry, and the wave functions based on the group products can be considered as a framework for constructing efficient computational methods in terms of "observable" parts of molecular systems. The elements of the group wave functions (electronic structure variables) can be optimized by requiring the number of operations proportional to the size of the molecule. This directly leads to computational methods linearly scaling for large molecular systems. In the present work we consider a particular case of such a wave function implemented for the semiempirical NDDO Hamiltonian. The electron groups are expressed in terms of optimized atomic (hybrid) orbitals with chemical bonds described by geminals and the delocalized groups described by Slater determinants (with or without spin restriction). This scheme is very fast by itself but its speed is considerably limited by the computations of the interatomic Coulomb interactions. Here we develop a consistent method based on group functions which uses the multipole scheme for interatomic interactions. The explicit usage of the atomic multipoles makes the method extremely fast, although the numerical efficiency is largely achieved due to the local character of the electron groups involved. We discuss numerical characteristics of the new method as well as its possible parametrization. We apply this method to study dodecahedral water clusters with hydrogen fluoride substitution and base the analysis on the exhaustive calculation of all symmetry-independent hydrogen-bond networks.

Electron group functions for the analysis of the electronic structures of molecules.

The electronic structure of a vast majority of molecular systems can be understood in terms of electron groups and their wave functions. They serve as a natural basis for bringing intuitive chemical and physical concepts into quantum chemical calculations. This article considers the general electron group functions formalism as well as its simple geminal version. We try to characterize the wave function with the group structure and its capabilities in actual calculations. For this purpose we implement a variational method based on the wave function in the form of an antisymmetrized product of strongly orthogonal group functions and perform a series of electronic structure calculations for small molecules and model systems. The most important point studied is the relation between the choice of electron groups and the results obtained. We consider energetic characteristics as well as optimal geometry parameters. In view of practical importance, the structure of variationally optimized local one-electron states is considered in detail as well as intuitive characteristics of chemical bonds.

Transferability of parameters of strictly local geminals' wave function and possibility of sequential derivation of molecular mechanics.

The problem of substantiation of molecular mechanics (MM) remains actual due to growing popularity of hybrid quantum/classical (QM/MM) schemes. Recently proposed deductive molecular mechanics (DMM) seems to be a natural tool to derive mechanistic models of molecular energy (classical force fields) from a suitable quantum mechanical (QM) description of molecular structure. It is based on an assumption that the trial wave function underlying the MM description is one of the antisymmetrized product of strictly local geminals (SLG). A proof of transferability of electronic structure parameters (ESPs) in this approximation is an essential component of a logical framework for the transition from the QM to an MM description because it allows constructing expressions for potential energy surfaces by proper consideration of the response of the ESPs to the variations of geometry parameters. In the present article the ESPs defining density matrix elements and basis one-electron states (hybrid orbitals-HOs) in the SLG approximation are formally considered. The transferability of the density matrix elements with respect to the parameters of molecular electronic structure and the linear response relations for the HOs are proven to take place under very nonrestrictive conditions. Special attention is paid to numerical estimates of the ESPs' features giving an "experimental" support to approximate expressions for the molecular energy.

Efficient multipole model and linear scaling of NDDO-based methods.

Fast growth of computational costs with that of the system's size is a bottleneck for the applications of traditional methods of quantum chemistry to polyatomic molecular systems. This problem is addressed by the development of linear (or almost linear) scaling methods. In the semiempirical domain, it is typically achieved by a series of approximations to the self-consistent field (SCF) solution. By contrast, we propose a route to linear scalability by modifying the trial wave function itself. Our approach is based on variationally determined strictly local one-electron states and a geminal representation of chemical bonds and lone pairs. A serious obstacle previously faced on this route were the numerous transformations of the two-center repulsion integrals characteristic for the neglect of diatomic differential overlap (NDDO) methods. We pass it by replacing the fictitious charge configurations usual for the NDDO scheme by atomic multipoles interacting through semiempirical potentials. It ensures invariance of these integrals and improves the computational efficiency of the whole method. We discuss possible schemes for evaluating the integrals as well as their numerical values. The method proposed is implemented for the most popular modified neglect of diatomic overlap (MNDO), Austin model 1 (AM1), and PM3 parametrization schemes of the NDDO family. Our calculations involving well-justified cutoff procedures for molecular interactions unequivocally show that the proposed scheme provides almost linear scaling of computational costs with the system's size. The numerical results on molecular properties certify that our method is superior with respect to its SCF-based ancestors.