Decoupling Plasmonic Hot Carrier from Thermal Catalysis via Electrode Engineering.

Increased attention has been directed toward generating nonequilibrium hot carriers resulting from the decay of collective electronic oscillations on metal known as surface plasmons. Despite numerous experimental endeavors, demonstrating hot carrier-mediated photocatalysis without a heating contribution has proven challenging, particularly for single electron transfer reactions where the thermal contribution is generally detrimental. An innovative engineering solution is proposed to enable single electron transfer reactions with plasmonics. It consists of a photoelectrode designed as an energy filter and photocatalysis performed with light function modulation instead of continuously. The photoelectrode, consisting of FTO/TiO2 amorphous (10 nm)/Au nanoparticles, with TiO2 acting as a step-shape energy filter to enhance hot electron extraction and charge-separated state lifetime. The extracted hot electrons were directed toward the counter electrode, while the hot holes performed a single electron transfer oxidation reaction. Light modulation prevented local heat accumulation, effectively decoupling hot carrier catalysis from the thermal contribution.

Entrapped Molecule-Like Europium-Oxide Clusters in Zinc Oxide with Nearly Unaffected Host Structure.

Nanocrystalline ZnO sponges doped with 5 mol% EuO1.5 are obtained by heating metal-salt complex based precursor pastes at 200-900 °C for 3 min. X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) show that phase separation into ZnO:Eu and c-Eu2 O3 takes place upon heating at 700 °C or higher. The unit cell of the clean oxide made at 600 °C shows only ≈0.4% volume increase versus undoped ZnO, and EXAFS shows a ZnO local structure that is little affected by the Eu-doping and an average Eu3+ ion coordination number of ≈5.2. Comparisons of 23 density functional theory-generated structures having differently sized Eu-oxide clusters embedded in ZnO identify three structures with four or eight Eu atoms as the most energetically favorable. These clusters exhibit the smallest volume increase compared to undoped ZnO and Eu coordination numbers of 5.2-5.5, all in excellent agreement with experimental data. ZnO defect states are crucial for efficient Eu3+ excitation, while c-Eu2 O3 phase separation results in loss of the characteristic Eu3+ photoluminescence. The formation of molecule-like Eu-oxide clusters, entrapped in ZnO, proposed here, may help in understanding the nature of the unexpected high doping levels of lanthanide ions in ZnO that occur virtually without significant change in ZnO unit cell dimensions.

Toward an efficient f-in-core/f-in-valence switchable description for DFTB calculations of Ce 4f states in ceria.

A computational protocol is developed for efficient studies of partially reduced redox-active oxides using the self-consistent charge density functional tight-binding method. The protocol is demonstrated for ceria, which is a prototypical reducible oxide material. The underlying idea is to achieve a consistent (and harmonized) set of Slater-Koster (SK) tables with connected repulsive potentials that enable switching on and off the in-valence description of the Ce 4f states without serious loss of accuracy in structure and energetics. The implicit treatment of the Ce 4f states, with the use of f-in-core SK-tables, is found to lead to a significant decrease in computational time. More importantly, it allows for explicit control of the oxidation states of individual Ce atoms. This makes it possible to "freeze" the electronic configuration, thereby allowing the exploration of the energetics for various meta-stable configurations. We anticipate that the outlined strategy can help to shed light on the interplay between the size, shape, and redox activity for nanoceria and other related materials.

H2O2(s) and H2O2·2H2O(s) crystals compared with ices: DFT functional assessment and D3 analysis.

The H2O and H2O2 molecules resemble each other in a multitude of ways as has been noted in the literature. Here, we present density functional theory (DFT) calculations for the H2O2(s) and H2O2·2H2O(s) crystals and make selected comparisons with ice polymorphs. The performance of a number of dispersion-corrected density functionals-both self-consistent and a posteriori ones-are assessed, and we give special attention to the D3 correction and its effects. The D3 correction to the lattice energies is large: for H2O2(s) the D3 correction constitutes about 25% of the lattice energy using PBE, much more for RPBE, much less for SCAN, and it primarily arises from non-H-bonded interactions out to about 5 Å.The large D3 corrections to the lattice energies are likely a consequence of several effects: correction for missing dispersion interaction, the ability of D3 to capture and correct various other kinds of limitations built into the underlying DFT functionals, and finally some degree of cell-contraction-induced polarization enhancement. We find that the overall best-performing functionals of the twelve examined are optPBEvdW and RPBE-D3. Comparisons with DFT assessments for ices in the literature show that where the same methods have been used, the assessments largely agree.

Phonon-Assisted Hot Carrier Generation in Plasmonic Semiconductor Systems.

Plasmonic materials have optical cross sections that exceed by 10-fold their geometric sizes, making them uniquely suitable to convert light into electrical charges. Harvesting plasmon-generated hot carriers is of interest for the broad fields of photovoltaics and photocatalysis; however, their direct utilization is limited by their ultrafast thermalization in metals. To prolong the lifetime of hot carriers, one can place acceptor materials, such as semiconductors, in direct contact with the plasmonic system. Herein, we report the effect of operating temperature on hot electron generation and transfer to a suitable semiconductor. We found that an increase in the operation temperature improves hot electron harvesting in a plasmonic semiconductor hybrid system, contrasting what is observed on photodriven processes in nonplasmonic systems. The effect appears to be related to an enhancement in hot carrier generation due to phonon coupling. This discovery provides a new strategy for optimization of photodriven energy production and chemical synthesis.

Fast, Low-Cost Synthesis of ZnO:Eu Nanosponges and the Nature of Ln Doping in ZnO.

A low-cost template-free solution chemical route to highly porous nanocrystalline sponges of ZnO-EuO1.5 with 0-5 mol % Eu is presented. The process uses Zn- and Eu-acetate-nitrate and triethanolamine as precursors in methanol. After evaporation of the solvent and heating at 200 °C for 3 min, crystalline ZnO:Eu sponges with minor amounts of organic residues were obtained. Heating to 400 °C replaced the organics with carbonate, which in its turn was decomposed at temperatures below 600 °C, forming ZnO:Eu sponges. Samples heated to 200-1000 °C for 3 min were studied with XRD, SEM, TEM, TG, XPS, and IR spectroscopy. The ZnO:Eu crystallite sizes could be tuned from below 10 nm for sponges prepared at 200-500 °C, to over 100 nm range at 900 °C, without sintering of the overall microstructure. XRD showed the presence of hexagonal ZnO:Eu (or at 700-1000 °C, ZnO:Eu and cubic Eu2O3) as the only phases present. The ZnO:Eu had slightly larger unit cell dimensions than the literature value of ZnO for samples obtained at 200-600 °C, while the unit cells of samples obtained at higher temperatures were quite close to the value of undoped ZnO. XPS showed that Eu was mainly in its 3+ state and well-distributed within the sponges but segregated at the ZnO sponge surface upon heating at 700-1000 °C, in accordance with XRD studies showing Eu2O3 formation.

The water/ceria(111) interface: Computational overview and new structures.

Thin film structures of water on the CeO2(111) surface for coverages between 0.5 and 2.0 water monolayers have been optimized and analyzed using density functional theory (optPBE-vdW functional). We present a new 1.0 ML structure that is both the lowest in energy published and features a hydrogen-bond network extending the surface in one-dimension, contrary to what has been found in the literature, and contrary to what has been expected due to the large bulk ceria cell dimension. The adsorption energies for the monolayer and multilayered water structures agree well with experimental temperature programmed desorption results from the literature, and we discuss the stability window of CeO2(111) surfaces covered with 0.5-2.0 ML of water.

Fluorine impurities at CeO2(111): Effects on oxygen vacancy formation, molecular adsorption, and surface re-oxidation.

We investigate the effects of anion doping with fluorine impurities on the chemistry of the CeO2 (111) facet, using the results of DFT + U calculations. We consider three prototypical processes: the formation of oxygen vacancies, the adsorption of O2 and H2O molecules, and the re-oxidation of the surface with fragments of the two molecules. We find that the first two of these processes are not strongly affected, but that the presence of F lowers the energy gained in the re-oxidation of the surface in comparison to the healing of an oxygen vacancy, by 1.47 eV in the case of O2 (provided that the F is part of a cluster) and by 0.92 eV in the case of H2O. Based on these results, we suggest that F could enhance the redox chemistry of ceria by toggling between being in the surface and on the surface, effectively facilitating the release of lattice O by acting as a "place holder" for it. Finally, we find that the desorption of F as either 12F2 or HF is energetically unfavourable, suggesting that F doped ceria should be stable in the presence of O2 and H2O.

Comparing van der Waals DFT methods for water on NaCl(001) and MgO(001).

In this work, a range of van der Waals type density functionals are applied to the H2O/NaCl(001) and H2O/MgO(001) interface systems to explore the effect of an explicit dispersion treatment. The functionals we use are the self-consistent vdW functionals vdW-DF, vdW-DF2, optPBE-vdW, optB88-vdW, optB86b-vdW, and vdW-DF-cx, as well as the dispersion-corrected PBE-TS and PBE-D2 methods; they are all compared with the standard PBE functional. For both NaCl(001) and MgO(001), we find that the dispersion-flavoured functionals stabilize the water-surface interface by approximately 20%-40% compared to the PBE results. For NaCl(001), where the water molecules remain intact for all overlayers, the dominant contribution to the adsorption energy from "density functional theory dispersion" stems from the water-surface interactions rather than the water-water interactions. The optPBE-vdW and vdW-DF-cx functionals yield adsorption energies in good agreement with available experimental values for both NaCl and MgO. To probe the strengths of the perturbations of the adsorbed water molecules, we also calculated water dipole moments and found an increase up to 85% for water at the MgO(001) surface and 70% at the NaCl(001) surface, compared to the gas-phase dipole moment.

Curvature Constrained Splines for DFTB Repulsive Potential Parametrization.

The Curvature Constrained Splines (CCS) methodology has been used for fitting repulsive potentials to be used in SCC-DFTB calculations. The benefit of using CCS is that the actual fitting of the repulsive potential is performed through quadratic programming on a convex objective function. This guarantees a unique (for strictly convex) and optimum two-body repulsive potential in a single shot, thereby making the parametrization process robust, and with minimal human effort. Furthermore, the constraints in CCS give the user control to tune the shape of the repulsive potential based on prior knowledge about the system in question. Herein, we developed the method further with new constraints and the capability to handle sparse data. We used the method to generate accurate repulsive potentials for bulk Si polymorphs and demonstrate that for a given Slater-Koster table, which reproduces the experimental band structure for bulk Si in its ground state, we are unable to find one single two-body repulsive potential that can accurately describe the various bulk polymorphs of silicon in our training set. We further demonstrate that to increase transferability, the repulsive potential needs to be adjusted to account for changes in the chemical environment, here expressed in the form of a coordination number. By training a near-sighted Atomistic Neural Network potential, which includes many-body effects but still essentially within the first-neighbor shell, we can obtain full transferability for SCC-DFTB in terms of describing the energetics of different Si polymorphs.

Lignin Intermediates on Palladium: Insights into Keto-Enol Tautomerization from Theoretical Modelling.

It has been suggested in the literature that keto-to-enol tautomerization plays a vital role for lignin fragmentation under mild conditions. On the other hand, previous modelling has shown that the adsorbed keto form is more stable than enol on the Pd(111) catalyst. The current density functional theory study of lignin model molecules shows that, in the gas-phase, keto is more stable than enol, but on the Pd surface, we find enol conformers that are at least as stable as keto. This supports the experimental result that the favourable reaction pathway for lignin depolymerization involves keto-enol tautomerization. An energy decomposition analysis gives insights concerning the origin of the fine energy balance between the keto and enol forms, where the molecule-surface interaction (-7 eV) and the molecular strain energy (+3 eV) are the main contributors to the adsorption energy.

Fifty Shades of Water: Benchmarking DFT Functionals against Experimental Data for Ionic Crystalline Hydrates.

We propose that crystalline ionic hydrates constitute a valuable resource for benchmarking theoretical methods for aqueous ionic systems. Many such structures are known from the experimental literature, and they contain a large variety of water-water and ion-water structural motifs. Here we have collected a data set (CRYSTALWATER50) of 50 structurally unique "in-crystal" water molecules, involved in close to 100 nonequivalent O-H···O hydrogen bonds. A dozen well-known DFT functionals were benchmarked with respect to their ability to describe these experimental structures and their OH vibrational frequencies. We find that the PBE, RPBE-D3, and optPBE-vdW methods give the best H-bond distances and that anharmonic OH frequencies generated from B3LYP//optPBE-vdW energy scans outperform the other methods, i.e., here we performed B3LYP energy scans along the OH stretching coordinate while the rest of the structure was kept fixed at the optPBE-vdW-optimized positions.

Multiscale Modeling of Agglomerated Ceria Nanoparticles: Interface Stability and Oxygen Vacancy Formation.

The interface formation and its effect on redox processes in agglomerated ceria nanoparticles (NPs) have been investigated using a multiscale simulation approach with standard density functional theory (DFT), the self-consistent-charge density functional tight binding (SCC-DFTB) method, and a DFT-parameterized reactive force-field (ReaxFF). In particular, we have modeled Ce40O80 NP pairs, using SCC-DFTB and DFT, and longer chains and networks formed by Ce40O80 or Ce132O264 NPs, using ReaxFF molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the most stable {111}/{111} interface structure is coherent whereas the stable {100}/{100} structures can be either coherent or incoherent. The formation of {111}/{111} interfaces is found to have only a very small effect on the oxygen vacancy formation energy, E vac. The opposite holds true for {100}/{100} interfaces, which exhibit significantly lower E vac values than the bare surfaces, despite the fact that the interface formation eliminates reactive {100} facets. Our results pave the way for an increased understanding of ceria NP agglomeration.

The nature of NOx species on BaO(100): an ab initio molecular dynamics study.

The dynamics of NO(x) species adsorbed on BaO(100) have been investigated with ab initio molecular dynamics simulations at a temperature of 300 degrees C. Nitrites are found to continuously interconvert between different adsorption configurations. For both nitrites and nitrates, diffusion events between anion sites are observed. These findings support the use of spillover mechanisms often postulated in mechanistic models of catalysts based on the NO(x)() storage and reduction concept. The large number of possible adsorption configurations are reflected in broad calculated vibrational signatures. These results explain the corresponding property observed in experimental infrared measurements of NO(x)() species on BaO. The dynamic response of the BaO(100) surface is found to strongly depend on the nature of the surface-adsorbate interaction. The largest distortions are predicted for nitrite adsorption.

Toward a realistic description of NO(x) storage in BaO: the aspect of BaCO3.

NO(x) storage over hexagonal BaCO3(110) is investigated using first-principles calculations. Special focus is put on the importance of surface decarbonation. Upon decarbonation, supported BaO quasi-molecules are formed and a small drive toward (BaO)n cluster formation is predicted. Introduction of NO2 makes the decarbonation energetically relevant, while forming NO2-BaO-NO2 units, on the decarbonated surface. With this configuration, it is possible to replace all surface carbonates with nitrites and nitrates, forming a BaCO3 supported BaNO3NO2 overlayer. Thermodynamic considerations are employed to elaborate on the thermal stability of the formed NO(x) overlayers.

Enhanced wetting of Cu on ZnO by migration of subsurface oxygen vacancies.

Metal adhesion on metal oxides is strongly controlled by the oxide surface structure and composition, but lack of control over the surface conditions often limits the possibilities to exploit this in opto- and micro-electronics applications and heterogeneous catalysis where nanostructural control is of utmost importance. The Cu/ZnO system is among the most investigated of such systems in model studies, but the presence of subsurface ZnO defects and their important role for adhesion on ZnO have been unappreciated so far. Here we reveal that the surface-directed migration of subsurface defects affects the Cu adhesion on polar ZnO(0001) in the technologically interesting temperature range up to 550 K. This leads to enhanced adhesion and ultimately complete wetting of ZnO(0001) by a Cu overlayer. On the basis of our experimental and computational results we demonstrate a mechanism which implies that defect concentrations in the bulk are an important, and possibly controllable, parameter for the metal-on-oxide growth.

Supercharged Low-Temperature Oxygen Storage Capacity of Ceria at the Nanoscale.

We provide an explanation for the experimental finding of a dramatically enhanced low-temperature oxygen storage capacity for small ceria nanoparticles. At low temperature, small octahedral ceria nanoparticles will be understoichiometric at both oxidizing and reducing conditions without showing explicit oxygen vacancies. Instead, rather than becoming stoichiometric at oxidizing conditions, such particles are stabilized through oxygen adsorption forming superoxo (O2(-)) ions and become in this way supercharged with oxygen. The supercharging effect is size-dependent and largest for small nanoparticles where it gives a direct increase in the oxygen storage capacity and simultaneously provides a source of active oxygen species at low temperatures.

Band-Filling Correction Method for Accurate Adsorption Energy Calculations: A Cu/ZnO Case Study.

We present a simple method, the "band-filling correction", to calculate accurate adsorption energies (Eads) in the low coverage limit from finite-size supercell slab calculations using DFT. We show that it is necessary to use such a correction if charge transfer takes place between the adsorbate and the substrate, resulting in the substrate bands either filling up or becoming depleted. With this correction scheme, we calculate Eads of an isolated Cu atom adsorbed on the ZnO(101̅0) surface. Without the correction, the calculated Eads is highly coverage-dependent, even for surface supercells that would typically be considered very large (in the range from 1 nm × 1 nm to 2.5 nm × 2.5 nm). The correction scheme works very well for semilocal functionals, where the corrected Eads is converged within 0.01 eV for all coverages. The correction scheme also works well for hybrid functionals if a large supercell is used and the exact exchange interaction is screened.

An SCC-DFTB Repulsive Potential for Various ZnO Polymorphs and the ZnO-Water System.

We have developed an efficient scheme for the generation of accurate repulsive potentials for self-consistent charge density-functional-based tight-binding calculations, which involves energy-volume scans of bulk polymorphs with different coordination numbers. The scheme was used to generate an optimized parameter set for various ZnO polymorphs. The new potential was subsequently tested for ZnO bulk, surface, and nanowire systems as well as for water adsorption on the low-index wurtzite (101̅0) and (112̅0) surfaces. By comparison to results obtained at the density functional level of theory, we show that the newly generated repulsive potential is highly transferable and capable of capturing most of the relevant chemistry of ZnO and the ZnO/water interface.