On the Trail of Molecular Hydrophilicity and Hydrophobicity at Aqueous Interfaces.

Uncovering microscopic hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity at heterogeneous aqueous interfaces is essential as it dictates physico/chemical properties such as wetting, the electrical double layer, and reactivity. Several molecular and spectroscopic descriptors were proposed, but a major limitation is the lack of connections between them. Here, we combine density functional theory-based MD simulations (DFT-MD) and SFG spectroscopy to explore how interfacial water responds in contact with self-assembled monolayers (SAM) of tunable hydrophilicity. We introduce a microscopic metric to track the transition from hydrophobic to hydrophilic interfaces. This metric combines the H/V descriptor, a structural descriptor based on the preferential orientation within the water network in the topmost binding interfacial layer (BIL) and spectroscopic fingerprints of H-bonded and dangling OH groups of water carried by BIL-resolved SFG spectra. This metric builds a bridge between molecular descriptors of hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity and spectroscopically measured quantities and provides a recipe to quantitatively or qualitatively interpret experimental SFG signals.

First-Principles Study of Dissociation Processes for the Synthesis of Fe and Co Oxide Nanoparticles.

Thermal decomposition is a practical and reliable tool to synthesize nanoparticles with monodisperse size distribution and reproducible accuracy. The nature of the precursor molecules and their interaction with the environment during the synthesis process have a direct impact on the resulting nanoparticles. Our study focuses on widely used transition-metal (Co, Fe) stearates precursors and their thermal decomposition reaction pathway. We show how the nature of the metal and the presence or absence of water molecules, directly related to the humidity conditions during the synthesis process, affect the decomposition mechanism and the resulting transition-metal oxide building blocks. This, in turn, has a direct effect on the physical and chemical properties of the produced nanoparticles and deeply influences their composition and morphology.

Exohedral M-C60 and M2-C60 (M = Pt, Pd) systems as tunable-gap building blocks for nanoarchitecture and nanocatalysis.

Transition metal-fullerenes complexes with metal atoms bound on the external surface of C60 are promising building blocks for next-generation fuel cells and catalysts. Yet, at variance with endohedral M@C60, they have received a limited attention. By resorting to first principles simulations, we elucidate structural and electronic properties for the Pd-C60, Pt-C60, PtPd-C60, Pd2-C60, and Pt2-C60 complexes. The most stable structures feature the metal atom located above a high electron density site, namely, the π bond between two adjacent hexagons (π-66 bond). When two metal atoms are added, the most stable configuration is those in which metal atoms still stand on π-66 bonds but tends to clusterize. The electronic structure, rationalized in terms of localized Wannier functions, provides a clear picture of the underlying interactions responsible for the stability or instability of the complexes, showing a strict relationship between structure and electronic gap.