Using C-DFT to develop an e-ReaxFF force field for acetophenone radical anion.

Increased electricity usage over the past several decades has accelerated the need for efficient high-voltage power transmission with reliable insulating materials. Cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) prepared via dicumyl peroxide (DCP) cross-linking has emerged as the insulator of choice for modern power cables. Although DCP cross-linking generates the desired XLPE product in high yield, other by-products are also produced. One such by-product, acetophenone, is particularly intriguing due to its aromaticity and positive electron affinity. In this work, constrained density functional theory (C-DFT) was utilized to develop an e-ReaxFF force field suitable for describing the acetophenone radical anion. Initial parameters were taken from the 2021 Akbarian e-ReaxFF force field, which was developed to describe XLPE chemistry. Then, C-DFT geometry optimizations were performed wherein an excess electron was constrained to each atom of acetophenone. The resulting C-DFT energy values for the various electronic positions were added to the e-ReaxFF training set. Next, an analogous set of structures was energy-minimized using e-ReaxFF, and equilibrium mixture compositions for the two methods were compared at multiple temperatures. Iterative fitting against C-DFT energy data was performed until satisfactory agreement was achieved. To test force field performance, molecular dynamics simulations were performed in e-ReaxFF and the resulting electronic distributions were qualitatively compared to unconstrained-DFT spin density data. By expanding our e-ReaxFF force field for XLPE, namely, adding the capability to describe acetophenone and its interactions with an excess electron, we move one step closer to a comprehensive molecular understanding of XLPE chemistry in a high-voltage power cable.

Understanding physical chemistry of BaxSr1-xTiO3 using ReaxFF molecular dynamics simulations.

Barium strontium titanate BaxSr1-xTiO3 (BSTO) has been widely used in nano devices due to its unique ferroelectric properties and can be epitaxially grown on a SrTiO3 (STO) support, with a reduced lattice and thermal mismatch. In this work, we developed a ReaxFF reactive force field verified against quantum mechanical data to investigate the temperature and composition dependency of BSTO in non-ferroelectric/ferroelectric phases. This potential was also explicitly designed to capture the surface energetics of STO with SrO and TiO2 terminations. Our molecular dynamics simulations indicate that when the percentage of Sr increases, the phase transition temperature and the polarizations of the BaxSr1-xTiO3 system decrease monotonically. In addition, as the oxygen vacancy concentration enhances, the initial polarization and the phase transition temperature of the system drop significantly. Furthermore, our simulation results show that charge screening induced by adsorption of water molecules on TiO2 terminated surfaces leads to an increased initial polarization.

Recent Advances for Improving the Accuracy, Transferability, and Efficiency of Reactive Force Fields.

Reactive force fields provide an affordable model for simulating chemical reactions at a fraction of the cost of quantum mechanical approaches. However, classically accounting for chemical reactivity often comes at the expense of accuracy and transferability, while computational cost is still large relative to nonreactive force fields. In this Perspective, we summarize recent efforts for improving the performance of reactive force fields in these three areas with a focus on the ReaxFF theoretical model. To improve accuracy, we describe recent reformulations of charge equilibration schemes to overcome unphysical long-range charge transfer, new ReaxFF models that account for explicit electrons, and corrections for energy conservation issues of the ReaxFF model. To enhance transferability we also highlight new advances to include explicit treatment of electrons in the ReaxFF and hybrid nonreactive/reactive simulations that make it possible to model charge transfer, redox chemistry, and large systems such as reverse micelles within the framework of a reactive force field. To address the computational cost, we review recent work in extended Lagrangian schemes and matrix preconditioners for accelerating the charge equilibration method component of ReaxFF and improvements in its software performance in LAMMPS.

Dynamics of the Chemically Driven Densification of Barium Titanate Using Molten Hydroxides.

Molten hydroxides, often used for crystal growth and nanoparticle synthesis, have recently been applied for the single step densification of several inorganic materials under moderate uniaxial pressures and 1000 °C below their usual sintering temperatures. The latter approach, termed cold sintering process (CSP), is a mechanochemically driven process that enables the densification of inorganic materials through a dissolution-precipitation creep mechanism. In this study, we report the main densification mechanisms of BaTiO3 in a NaOH-KOH eutectic mixture. A chemical insight at the atomistic level, investigated by ReaxFF molecular dynamics simulations, offers plausible ionic complex formation scenarios and reactions at the BaTiO3/molten hydroxide interface, enabling the dissolution-precipitation reactions and the subsequent cold sintering of BaTiO3.

Atomistic-scale insight into the polyethylene electrical breakdown: An eReaxFF molecular dynamics study.

Cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) has been recognized as an outstanding insulator for high-voltage power cables due to its favorable structural integrity at high temperature, low moisture sensitivity, chemical resistance, and low rates of failure due to aging. However, the roles of by-products and amorphous regions generated during the XLPE production are not clearly known at the atomistic scale. In this study, we present an eReaxFF-based molecular dynamics simulation framework with an explicit electron description verified against density functional theory data to investigate the roles of XLPE by-products and processing variables such as density and voids on the time to dielectric breakdown (TDDB) of polyethylene (PE). Our simulation results indicate that an increase in density of PE increases the TDDB; however, adding a by-product with positive electron affinity such as acetophenone can reduce the TDDB. Furthermore, during the electrical breakdown in PE, electrons tend to migrate through voids when transferring from the anode to cathode. In comparison with neutral acetophenone, we find that the acetophenone radical anion can significantly reduce the energy barrier and the reaction energy of secondary chemical reactions.

Full-Scale Ab Initio Simulation of Magic-Angle-Spinning Dynamic Nuclear Polarization.

Theoretical models aimed at describing magic-angle-spinning (MAS) dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) NMR have great potential in facilitating the in silico design of DNP polarizing agents and formulations. These models must typically face a trade-off between the accuracy of a strict quantum mechanical description and the need for using realistically large spin systems, for instance, using phenomenological models. Here, we show that the use of aggressive state-space restrictions and an optimization strategy allows full-scale ab initio MAS-DNP simulations of spin systems containing thousands of nuclei. Our simulations are shown to reproduce experimental DNP enhancements quantitatively, including their MAS rate dependence, for both frozen solutions and solid materials. They also reveal the importance of a previously unrecognized structural feature found in some polarizing agents that helps minimize the sensitivity losses imposed by the spin diffusion barrier.

Understanding the influence of defects and surface chemistry on ferroelectric switching: a ReaxFF investigation of BaTiO3.

Ferroelectric materials such as barium titanate (BaTiO3) have a wide range of applications in nano scale electronic devices due to their outstanding properties. In this study, we developed an easily extendable atomistic ReaxFF reactive force field for BaTiO3 that can capture both its field- and temperature-induced ferroelectric hysteresis and corresponding changes due to surface chemistry and bulk defects. Using our force field, we were able to reproduce and explain a number of experimental observations: (1) the existence of a critical thickness of 4.8 nm below which ferroelectricity vanishes in BaTiO3; (2) migration and clustering of oxygen vacancies (OVs) in BaTiO3 and a reduction in the polarization and the Curie temperature due to the OVs; (3) domain wall interaction with the surface chemistry to influence the ferroelectric switching and polarization magnitude. This new computational tool opens up a wide range of possibilities for making predictions for realistic ferroelectric interfaces in energy-conversion, electronic and neuromorphic systems.

Atomistic Scale Analysis of the Carbonization Process for C/H/O/N-Based Polymers with the ReaxFF Reactive Force Field.

During the carbonization process of raw polymer precursors, graphitic structures can evolve. The presence of these graphitic structures affects mechanical properties of the carbonized carbon fibers. To gain a better understanding of the chemistry behind the evolution of these structures, we performed atomistic-scale simulations using the ReaxFF reactive force field. Three different polymers were considered as a precursor: idealized ladder PAN (polyacrylonitrile), a proposed oxidized PAN, and poly( p-phenylene-2,6-benzobisoxazole). We determined the underlying molecular details of polymer conversion into a carbon fiber structure. Because these are C/H/O/N-based polymers, we first developed an improved force field for C/H/O/N chemistry based on the density functional theory data with a particular focus on N2 formation kinetics and its interactions with polymer-associated radicals formed during the carbonization process. Then, using this improved force field, we performed atomistic-scale simulations of the initial stage of the carbonization process for the considered polymers. On the basis of our simulation data, the molecular pathways for the formation of low-molecular-weight gas species and all-carbon ring formation were determined. We also examined the possible alignment of the developed all-carbon 6-membered ring clusters, which is crucial for the further graphitic structure evolution.