Effects of rare-earth dopants on transition to the superionic state of fluorites

An explanation is suggested for the observation that in fluorites the temperature of transition to the superionic state is depressed by rare-earth dopants.     

Defect aggregation in anion-excess fluorites II. Clusters containing more than two impurity atoms

A theoretical study has been made of defect clustering in fluorite crystals. The emphasis is on the aggregation processes that can occur beyond the dimer stage which was discussed previously (J. Corish, C. R. A. Catlow, P. W. M. Jacobs, and S. H. Ong,Phys. Rev. B25, 6425 (1982)). The systems studied comprise CaF₂, SrF₂, and BaF₂ doped withMF₃whereM =Y, Lu, Yb, Er, Tb, Gd, Eu, or La, and also SrCl₂ doped with GdCl₃, LaCl₃, or PrCl₃. Two tetramers, one containing a single anion vacancy and two 〈111〉 relaxed F^? ions and the other with a planar arrangement of the dopant ions, are stable for certain systems while a trimer and hexamers, with an octahedral arrangement of substitutionalM³⁺, also show considerable stability. A notable feature is the increase in the relative stability of larger complexes as the ratio of the radius of the dopant ion to that of the host lattice cation is decreased. The results are discussed in relation to recent EXAFS and neutron scattering work on these systems and should provide a useful guide in future experimental studies.     

The nature of the oxidation states of gold on ZnO

The interaction between gold in the 0, i, ii and iii oxidation states and the zinc-terminated ZnO(0001) surface is studied via the QM/MM electronic embedding method using density functional theory. The surface sites considered are the vacant zinc interstitial surface site (VZISS) and the bulk-terminated island site (BTIS). We find that on the VZISS, only Au(0) and Au(i) are stable oxidation states. However, all clusters of i to iii oxidation states are stable as substitutionals for Zn2+ in the bulk terminated island site. Au(OH)(x) complexes (x= 1-3) can adsorb exothermically onto the VZISS, indicating that higher oxidation states of gold can be stabilised at this site in the presence of hydroxyl groups. CO is used as a probe molecule to study the reactivity of Au in different oxidation states in VZISS and BTIS. In all cases, we find that the strongest binding of CO is to surface Au(i). Furthermore, CO binding onto Au(0) is stronger when the gold atom is adsorbed onto the VZISS compared to CO binding onto a gas phase neutral gold atom. These results indicate that the nature of the oxidation states of Au on ZnO(0001) will depend on the type of adsorption site. The role of ZnO in Au/ZnO catalysts is not, therefore, merely to disperse gold atoms/particles, but to also modify their electronic properties.     

Hole localization in [AlO4]0 defects in silica materials

First-principles calculations based on cluster models have been performed to investigate the ground state and the optically excited states of the [AlO(4)](0) hole in alpha-quartz and in the siliceous zeolite ZSM-5. The structure and spectroscopic properties of this defect have been studied using the recently developed Becke88-Becke95 one-parameter model for kinetics (BB1K) functional of Zhao et al., [J. Phys. Chem. A 108, 2715 (2004)]. Our results show that the BB1K method is significantly more reliable and more accurate than the standard density-functional theory (DFT) functionals at reproducing the localized spin density on one oxygen atom and the hyperfine coupling constants associated with the hole. Furthermore, we find that the BB1K results are in close agreement with experiments, and with the self-interaction-free unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) and unrestricted second-order M?ller-Plesset perturbation theory (UMP2) calculations. For the first time, we present results of the ground-state paramagnetic properties of the Al defect in ZSM-5. Similar to the theoretical work for defective alpha-quartz, we find that the BB1K, UHF, UHFLee-Yang-Parr, and UMP2 calculations show a localized hole on one oxygen neighboring the Al, while even the best to date thermochemically derived hybrid generalized gradient approximation density-functional, B97-2, predicts a different model where the hole is distributed over two oxygen. We have further considered the optical transitions of the [AlO(4)](0) center in alpha-quartz and ZSM-5. In both systems, our BB1K time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) and configuration interaction singles (CIS) calculations predict that the most likely transition involves electron transfer from the hole-bearing oxygen to other neighboring oxygen ions. This reinforces the experimental conclusions obtained for defective alpha-quartz. Notably, the two lowest, most dominant excitation energies calculated by BB1K-TDDFT (1.99 and 3.03 eV) show excellent agreement with experiment (1.96 and 2.85 eV [B. K. Meyer, J.M. Spaeth, and J.A. Weil, J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys. 17, L31 (1987)]) clearly outperforming the CIS method and other DFT calculations available in the literature.     

Computational study of the structure-directing effect of benzylpyrrolidine and its fluorinated derivatives in the synthesis of the aluminophosphate ALPO-5

Using a combination of computer modeling techniques, we have investigated the ability of benzylpyrrolidine and its fluorinated derivatives in ortho, meta, and para positions of the phenyl ring to direct the synthesis of the aluminophosphate AlPO-5. The o- and p-fluoro derivatives are not good templates because of the poor packing of the template molecules inside the AlPO-5 pores, due to a repulsion provoked by the fluorine atoms. However, benzylpyrrolidine and the m-fluoro derivative do direct the synthesis of AlPO-5, the latter being a better template due to higher electrostatic interactions with the framework. We demonstrate that, at least when the synthesis is performed with an excess of template molecules, the ability of organic templating molecules to direct the synthesis of microporous materials depends not on the host-guest interaction energy per unit of template molecules, as usually calculated, but on the density of interaction energy, i.e., the energy per formula unit of the microporous network. The packing density of molecules inside the channel system must be taken properly into account. From the calculated location of the benzylpyrrolidine molecules and their m-fluoro derivative inside the inorganic network, we would expect the formation of stable dimers.     

Synthesis and characterisation of small ZnS particles

Small ZnS particles, prepared at room temperature in an alcoholic medium using a zinc salt and thioacetamide as sulphur source, have been characterised using a suite of techniques which includes XRD, TEM and Zn K-edge EXAFS. The investigation suggests that aggregates of small sphalerite particles (cubic lattice), with average size of 3.5 nm and well-defined morphology are obtained and the particle size appears not to change with increase in the reaction time from 2 to 24 h. Zn K-edge EXAFS experiments were performed at 10 K, in order to reduce thermal disorder and the refinement of the EXAFS data resulted in very small second shell coordination numbers with respect to the bulk samples. The result is in good agreement with SEM and XRD data about the presence of nanosized particles, having a large number of surface atoms with low second shell coordination number.     

A proof-theoretical analysis of ptykes

Summary The notion of a ptyx is formalised in second-order arithmetic, and, using proof-theoretic techniques based on sequent-calculus, bounds are obtained for the ptykes of type 1 and 2 which can be proved to be ptykes using arithmetic comprehension.