First-principles and Molecular Dynamics simulation studies of functionalization of Au32 golden fullerene with amino acids.

With the growing potential applications of nanoparticles in biomedicine especially the increasing concerns of nanotoxicity of gold nanoparticles, the interaction between protein and nanoparticles is proving to be of fundamental interest for bio-functionalization of materials. The interaction of glycine (Gly) amino acid with Au32 fullerene was first investigated with B3LYP-D3/TZVP model. Several forms of glycine were selected to better understand the trends in binding nature of glycine interacting with the nanocage. We have evaluated various stable configurations of the Gly/Au32 complexes and the calculated adsorption energies and AIM analysis indicate that non-Gly, z-Gly and also tripeptide glycine can form stable bindings with Au32 at aqueous solution via their amino nitrogen (N) and/or carbonyl/carboxyl oxygen (O) active sites. Furthermore, cysteine, tyrosine, histidine and phenylalanine amino acids bound also strongly to the Au32 nanocage. Electronic structures and quantum molecular descriptors calculations also demonstrate the significant changes in the electronic properties of the nanocage due to the attachment of selected amino acids. DFT based MD simulation for the most stable complex demonstrate that Gly/Au32 complex is quite stable at ambient condition. Our first-principles findings offer fundamental insights into the functionalization of Au32 nanocage and envisage its applicability as novel carrier of the drugs.

DFT/TD-semiempirical study on the structural and electronic properties and absorption spectra of supramolecular fullerene-porphyrine-metalloporphyrine triads based dye-sensitized solar cells.

In the present work density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent semiempirical ZNIDO/S (TD-ZNIDO/S) methods have been used to investigate the ground state geometries, electronic structures and excited state properties of triad systems. The influences of the type of metal in the porphyrin ring, change in bridge position and porphyrine-ZnP duplicate on the energies of frontier molecular orbital and UV-Vis spectra has been studied. Geometry optimization, the energy levels and electron density of the Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital (HOMO) and the Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital (LUMO), chemical hardness (η), electrophilicity index (ω), electron accepting power (ω+) were calculated using ZINDO/S method to predict which molecule is the most efficient with a great capability to be used as a triad molecule in solar industry. Moreover the light harvesting efficiency (LHE) was calculated by means of the oscillator strengths which are obtained by TD-ZINDO/S calculation. Theoretical studies of the electronic spectra by ZINDO/S method were helpful in interpreting the observed electronic transitions. This aspect was systematically explored in a series of C60-Porphyrine-Metalloporphyrine (C60-P-Mp) triad system with M being Fe, Co, Ni, Ti, and Zn. Generally, transition metal coordination compounds are used as effective sensitizers, due to their intense charge-transfer absorption over the whole visible range and highly efficient metal-to-ligand charge transfer. We aim to optimize the performance of the title solar cells by altering the frontier orbital energy gaps. The results reveal that cell efficiency can be enhanced by metal functionalization of the free base porphyrin. Ti-porphyrin was found to be the most efficient dye sensitizer for dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) based on C60-P-Mptriad system due to C60-Por-TiP complex has lower chemical hardness, gap energy and chemical potential as well as higher electron accepting power among other complexes. In addition, the performance of solar cells favors better with doubly and increasing the π conjugated of the bridge.

Synthesis, spectral and luminescence study, crystal structure determination and DFT calculation of binuclear palladium(II) complexes.

Binuclear palladium(II) complexes with metal-metal (d8-d8) bonding interaction were synthesized by reactions of the 1-methyl-1H-1,2,3,4-tetrazole-5-thiol (Hmtzt) or a mixture of Hmtzt and 1,3-propanediamine (1,3-pda) ligands. Complex [Pd2(µ-mtzt)4]·2CH3CN (1) was synthesized by the reaction of Pd(OAc)2 with Hmtzt dissolved in acetonitrile and complex [Pd2(µ-mtzt)2(mtzt)2(1,3-pda)] (2) was synthesized by reaction of a mixture of Hmtzt and 1,3-propanediamine (dissolved in methanol) with PdCl2 (dissolved in acetonitrile) and were identified through elemental analysis, IR, UV-Vis, 1H NMR, luminescence spectroscopy as well as single-crystal X-ray diffraction method. A single-crystal of complex 1 shows that two Pd(II) centers are linked together by four bridging tetrazole ligands providing a paddle wheel-like arrangement. Also a crystal structure of complex 2 shows that this complex possesses a symmetric structure in which one Pd atom is tetra-coordinated by four sulfur atoms to forms PdS4 and other Pd atom is tetra-coordinated by four nitrogen to forms PdN4 coordination sphere. Density functional theory (DFT) was performed in this study for the Hmtzt ligand and binuclear palladium(II) complexes (1) and (2). The DFT calculation shows PdII-PdII bond lengths of 2.831 and 3.086Å in complex 1 and 2, respectively which are close to the observed bond lengths of 2.802(11) and 3.0911(17)Å from single-crystal X-ray structure. The optimized geometry of the complexes is shown good agreement by X-ray data. Structural properties and molecular descriptors including bond lengths, bond angles, chemical hardness, dipole moment, HOMO-LUMO energy levels, electron transfer were analyzed. The IR spectroscopy was performed using VEDA4 software and UV-Vis spectra were analyzed using time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) method. The theoretical and experimental data were also compared with each other.

Theoretical insight into hydrogen adsorption onto graphene: a first-principles B3LYP-D3 study.

This work investigates hydrogen adsorption onto various graphene flakes such as coronene and coronene-like as suitable models of graphene within the framework of the DFT-B3LYP method. The non-local van der Waals (vdW) density functional (B3LYP-D3) method is used for both structural geometry optimization and total energy estimations. Calculations were carried out for a hydrogen molecule above a coronene surface with both conventional and vdW corrected DFT to investigate how these approaches perform in the case of hydrogen adsorption on a graphene surface. Our first-principles results within the B3LYP-D3/def2-TZVPP model show that hydrogen physisorbs on a coronene surface with an adsorption energy of -5.013 (kJ mol(-1)) which is in good agreement with the experimental value. The influence of the basis set and graphene flake size were also evaluated and the results indicate that these slightly affect the adsorption properties. We found also that it is crucial to use non-local dispersion interactions to get accurate results for hydrogen adsorption on a graphene surface. Furthermore, the co-adsorption of H2 molecules onto the graphene surface was investigated. The results obtained at the B3LYP-D3/def2-TZVP level show that H2 molecules can be physisorbed on both sides of the graphene layer with adsorption properties similar to those for a single surface. Finally, we showed that H2 molecules might be bound to the graphene surface via a bilayer adsorption scheme with weak adsorption energy. Charge population and electron density analysis confirm the weak binding nature of the system under consideration.