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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 775 records · Page 43
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2015

Recombination activity of interfaces in multicrystalline silicon

The electrical activity of grain boundaries in multicrystalline silicon grown from metallurgical silicon by the Bridgman method is investigated by the method of electron-beam induced current. The main tendencies of atypical manifestation of the local electrical activity of Σ3(111) and Σ9(110) special boundaries are revealed. The structural features of the grain boundaries after selective etching and the impurity-distribution characteristics in multicrystalline silicon are determined by the methods of electron backscattering diffraction and electron-probe microanalysis.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2014

Theoretical investigation of charge accumulation layer on the Bi-induced InAs(111)-(2 × 2) surface

Based on pseudopotential method and density functional theory, we have investigated the stability, atomic geometry, and detailed electronic structures for Bi adsorbates on the InAs(111)-(2 × 2) surface with three different sites: (i) T{sub 4} (Bi trimer centered on T{sub 4} site), (ii) H{sub 3} (Bi trimer centered on H{sub 3} site), and (iii) T{sub 4}–H{sub 3} (which is formed by trimers with opposite orientations: one centered on a T{sub 4} site and the other on a H{sub 3}). Our total energy calculations suggest that adsorption on the T{sub 4}–H{sub 3} site is the energetically most stable structure among the proposed structures. The electronic band structure calculations reveal the existence of an accumulation layer between InAs(111) surface and Bi adatoms for T{sub 4}–H{sub 3}. Charge density difference results indicate significant amount of the charge accumulation on the Bi/InAs interface.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2016

Dependence of nuclear quadrupole resonance transitions on the electric field gradient asymmetry parameter for nuclides with half-integer spins

Allowed transition energies and eigenstate expansions have been calculated and tabulated in numerical form as functions of the electric field gradient asymmetry parameter for the zero field Hamiltonian of quadrupolar nuclides with I=3/2,5/2,7/2, and 9/2. These results are essential to interpret nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) spectra and extract accurate values of the electric field gradient tensors. Applications of NQR methods to studies of electronic structure in heavy element systems are proposed.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Electron-Diffraction Study of the Structure of Epitaxial Graphene Grown by the Method of Thermal Destruction of 6H- and 4H-SiC (0001) in Vacuum

The method of reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) is used for studying the structure of graphene layers formed on the surface of the Si-face of conductive and semi-insulating 6H- and 4H-SiC(0001) substrates by thermal desorption of Si atoms in high vacuum, depending on the temperature and time of sublimating Si atoms as well as depending on the method of preprocessing the substrate surface. Diffraction patterns are recorded in the [1̄21̄0] and [11̄00] crystallographic directions of the substrates. It is found that in all experiments the formation of graphene layers occurs with a rotation of the graphene crystal lattice by 30° relative to the SiC lattice.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2015

Mixed quantum/classical approach to OH-stretch inelastic incoherent neutron scattering spectroscopy for ambient and supercooled liquid water and ice Ih

OH-stretch inelastic incoherent neutron scattering (IINS) has been measured to determine the vibrational density of states (VDOS) in the OH-stretch region for liquid water, supercooled water, and ice Ih, providing complementary information to IR and Raman spectroscopies about hydrogen bonding in these phases. In this work, we extend the combined electronic-structure/molecular-dynamics (ES/MD) method, originally developed by Skinner and co-workers to simulate OH-stretch IR and Raman spectra, to the calculation of IINS spectra with small k values. The agreement between theory and experiment in the limit k → 0 is reasonable, further validating the reliability of the ES/MD method in simulating OH-stretch spectroscopy in condensed phases. The connections and differences between IINS and IR spectra are analyzed to illustrate the advantages of IINS over IR in estimating the OH-stretch VDOS.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2020

TeraChem Cloud: A High-Performance Computing Service for Scalable Distributed GPU-Accelerated Electronic Structure Calculations

The encapsulation and commoditization of electronic structure arise naturally as interoperability, and the use of nontraditional compute resources (e.g., new hardware accelerators, cloud computing) remains important for the computational chemistry community. Here, we present TERACHEM CLOUD, a high-performance computing service (HPCS) that offers on-demand electronic structure calculations on both traditional HPC clusters and cloud-based hardware. The framework is designed using off-the-shelf web technologies and containerization to be extremely scalable and portable. Within the HPCS model, users can quickly develop new methods and algorithms in an interactive environment on their laptop while allowing TERACHEM CLOUD to distribute ab initio calculations across all available resources. This approach greatly increases the accessibility of hardware accelerators such as graphics processing units (GPUs) and flexibility for the development of new methods as additional electronic structure packages are integrated into the framework as alternative backends. Cost-performance analysis indicates that traditional nodes are the most cost-effective long-term solution, but commercial cloud providers offer cutting-edge hardware with competitive rates for short-term large-scale calculations. We demonstrate the power of the TERACHEM CLOUD framework by carrying out several showcase calculations, including the generation of 300,000 density functional theory energy and gradient evaluations on medium-sized organic molecules and reproducing 300 fs of nonadiabatic dynamics on the B800-B850 antenna complex in LH2, with the latter demonstration using over 50 Tesla V100 GPUs in a commercial cloud environment in 8 h for approximately $1250.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2010

Yb{sub 5}Ni{sub 4}Sn{sub 10} and Yb{sub 7}Ni{sub 4}Sn{sub 13}: New polar intermetallics with 3D framework structures

The title compounds have been obtained by solid state reactions of the corresponding pure elements at high temperature, and structurally characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies. Yb{sub 5}Ni{sub 4}Sn{sub 10} adopts the Sc{sub 5}Co{sub 4}Si{sub 10} structure type and crystallizes in the tetragonal space group P4/mbm (No. 127) with cell parameters of a=13.785(4) A, c=4.492 (2) A, V=853.7(5) A{sup 3}, and Z=2. Yb{sub 7}Ni{sub 4}Sn{sub 13} is isostructural with Yb{sub 7}Co{sub 4}InGe{sub 12} and crystallizes in the tetragonal space group P4/m (No. 83) with cell parameters of a=11.1429(6) A, c=4.5318(4) A, V=562.69(7) A{sup 3}, and Z=1. Both structures feature three-dimensional (3D) frameworks based on three different types of one-dimensional (1D) channels, which are occupied by the Yb atoms. Electronic structure calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) indicate that both compounds are metallic. These results are in agreement with those from temperature-dependent resistivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements. - Graphical abstract: Two new ytterbium nickel stannides, namely, Yb{sub 5}Ni{sub 4}Sn{sub 10} and Yb{sub 7}Ni{sub 4}Sn{sub 13}, have been synthesized and structurally characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies. Both their structures feature three-dimensional (3D) frameworks based on three different types of one-dimensional (1D) channels, which are situated by all the Yb atoms. Electronic structure calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) indicate that both compounds are metallic, which are in accordance with the results from temperature-dependent resistivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Communication: Charge-population based dispersion interactions for molecules and materials

We introduce a system-independent method to derive effective atomic C{sub 6} coefficients and polarizabilities in molecules and materials purely from charge population analysis. This enables the use of dispersion-correction schemes in electronic structure calculations without recourse to electron-density partitioning schemes and expands their applicability to semi-empirical methods and tight-binding Hamiltonians. We show that the accuracy of our method is en par with established electron-density partitioning based approaches in describing intermolecular C{sub 6} coefficients as well as dispersion energies of weakly bound molecular dimers, organic crystals, and supramolecular complexes. We showcase the utility of our approach by incorporation of the recently developed many-body dispersion method [Tkatchenko et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 236402 (2012)] into the semi-empirical density functional tight-binding method and propose the latter as a viable technique to study hybrid organic-inorganic interfaces.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2019

Faithful tight-binding models and fragile topology of magic-angle bilayer graphene

Correlated insulators and superconductivity have been observed in “magic-angle” twisted bilayer graphene, when the nearly flat bands close to neutrality are partially filled. Here, while a momentum-space continuum model accurately describes these flat bands, interaction effects are more conveniently incorporated in tight-binding models. We have previously shown that no fully symmetric tight-binding model can be minimal, in the sense of capturing just the flat bands, so extended models are unavoidable. Here, we introduce a family of tight-binding models that capture the flat bands while simultaneously retaining all symmetries. In particular, we construct three concrete models with five, six, or ten bands per valley and per spin. These models are also faithful, in that the additional degrees of freedom represent energy bands further away from neutrality, and they serve as optimal starting points for a controlled study of interaction effects. Furthermore, our construction demonstrates the “fragile topology” of the nearly flat bands; i.e., the obstruction to constructing exponentially localized Wannier functions can be resolved when a particular set of trivial bands is added to the model.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2015

Efficient and accurate treatment of electron correlations with correlation matrix renormalization theory

We present an efficient method for calculating the electronic structure and total energy of strongly correlated electron systems. The method extends the traditional Gutzwiller approximation for one-particle operators to the evaluation of the expectation values of two particle operators in the many-electron Hamiltonian. The method is free of adjustable Coulomb parameters, and has no double counting issues in the calculation of total energy, and has the correct atomic limit. We demonstrate that the method describes well the bonding and dissociation behaviors of the hydrogen and nitrogen clusters, as well as the ammonia composed of hydrogen and nitrogen atoms. We also show that the method can satisfactorily tackle great challenging problems faced by the density functional theory recently discussed in the literature. The computational workload of our method is similar to the Hartree-Fock approach while the results are comparable to high-level quantum chemistry calculations.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Ab initio approaches for the determination of heavy element energetics: Ionization energies of trivalent lanthanides (Ln = La-Eu)

An effective approach for the determination of lanthanide energetics, as demonstrated by application to the third ionization energy (in the gas phase) for the first half of the lanthanide series, has been developed. This approach uses a combination of highly correlated and fully relativistic ab initio methods to accurately describe the electronic structure of heavy elements. Both scalar and fully relativistic methods are used to achieve an approach that is both computationally feasible and accurate. The impact of basis set choice and the number of electrons included in the correlation space has also been examined.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

First-principles study on equation of states and electronic structures of shock compressed Ar up to warm dense regime

The equation of states (EOS) and electronic structures of argon with temperatures from 0.02 eV to 3 eV and densities from 0.5 g/cm{sup 3} to 5.5 g/cm{sup 3} are calculated using the pair potential and many-body potential molecular dynamics and the density functional theory (DFT) molecular dynamics with van der Waals (vdW) corrections. First-principles molecular dynamics is implemented above 2.0 g/cm{sup 3}. For the cases of low densities below 3 g/cm{sup 3}, we performed pair potential molecular dynamics in order to obtain the ionic configurations, which are used in density functional theory to calculate the EOS and electronic structures. We checked the validity of different methods at different densities and temperatures, showing their behaviors by comparing EOS. DFT without vdW correction works well above 1 eV and 3.5 g/cm{sup 3}. Below 1 eV and 2.0 g/cm{sup 3}, it overestimates the pressure apparently and results in incorrect behaviors of the internal energy. With vdW corrections, the semi-empirical force-field correction (DFT-D2) method gives consistent results in the whole density and temperature region, and the vdW density functional (vdW-DF2) method gives good results below 2.5 g/cm{sup 3}, but it overestimates the pressure at higher densities. The interactions among the atoms are overestimated by the pair potential above 1 eV, and a temperature dependent scaled pair potential can be used to correct the ionic configurations of the pair potential up to 3 eV. The comparisons between our calculations and the experimental multi-shock compression results show that the Hugoniot line of DFT-D2 and DFT tends to give larger pressure than the results of the self-consistent fluid variational theory, and the difference increases with the density. The electronic energy gap exists for all our cases up to 5.5 g/cm{sup 3} and 1 eV. The effect of vdW interactions on the electronic structures are also discussed.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2010

Trends in Aqueous Hydration Across the 4f Period Assessed by Reliable Computational Methods

The geometric and electronic structures, as well as the thermodynamic properties of trivalent lanthanide hydrates {Ln(H₂O)₈,₉ 3+ and Ln(H₂O)₈,₉(H₂O)₁₂,₁₄ 3+ , Ln = La – Lu} have been examined using unrestricted density functional theory (UDFT), unrestricted M€oller-Plesset perturbation theory (UMP2), and multiconfigurational self-consistent field methods (MCSCF). While Ln-hydrates with 2-5 unpaired f-electrons have some multiconfigurational character, the correlation energy lies within 5-7 kcal/mol across the period and for varying coordination numbers. As such DFT yields structural parameters and thermodynamic data quite close to experimental values. Both UDFT and UMP2 predict free energies of water addition to the Ln(H₂O)₈ 3+ species to become less favorable across the period; however, it is a non-linear function of the surface charge density of the ion. UDFT further predicts that the symmetry of the metal-water bond lengths is sensitive to the specific f-electron configuration, presumably because of repulsive interactions between filled f-orbitals and water lone-pairs. Within the Ln(H₂O)₈,₉(H₂O)₁₂,₁₄ 3+ clusters, interactions between solvation shells overrides this orbital effect, increasing the accuracy of the geometric parameters and calculated vibrational frequencies. Calculated atomic charges indicate that the water ligands each donate 0.1 to 0.2 electrons to the Ln(III) metals, with increasing electron donation across the period. Significant polarization and charge transfer between solvation shells is also observed. The relationship between empirical effective charges and calculated atomic charges is discussed with suggestions for reconciling the trends across the period.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Excited States of Crystalline Point Defects with Multireference Density Matrix Embedding Theory

Accurate and affordable methods to characterize the electronic structure of solids are important for targeted materials design. Embedding-based methods provide an appealing balance in the trade-off between cost and accuracy-particularly when studying localized phenomena. Here, we use the density matrix embedding theory (DMET) algorithm to study the electronic excitations in solid-state defects with a restricted open-shell Hartree-Fock (ROHF) bath and multireference impurity solvers, specifically, complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) and n-electron valence state second-order perturbation theory (NEVPT2). In this work, we apply the method to investigate the electronic excitations in an oxygen vacancy (OV) on a MgO(100) surface and find absolute deviations within 0.05 eV between DMET using the CASSCF/NEVPT2 solver, denoted as CAS-DMET/NEVPT2-DMET, and the nonembedded CASSCF/NEVPT2 approach. Next, we establish the practicality of DMET by extending it to larger supercells for the OV defect and a neutral silicon vacancy in diamond where the use of nonembedded CASSCF/NEVPT2 is extremely expensive.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2012

Stability and Electronic Structures of CuxS Solar Cell Absorbers: Preprint

CuxS is one of the most promising solar cell absorber materials that has the potential to replace the leading thin-film solar cell material Cu(In,Ga)Se2 for high efficiency and low cost. In the past, solar cells based on CuxS have reached efficiency as high as 10%, but it also suffers serious stability issues. To further improve its efficiency and especially the stability, it is important tounderstand the stability and electronic structure of CuxS. However, due to the complexity of their crystal structures, no systematic theoretical studies have been carried out to understand the stability and electronic structure of the CuxS systems. In this work, using first-principles method, we have systematically studied the crystal and electronic band structures of CuxS (1.25 < x </= 2).For Cu2S, we find that all the three chalcocite phases, i.e., the low-chalcocite, the high-chalcocite, and the cubic-chalcocite phases, have direct bandgaps around 1.3-1.5 eV, with the low-chalcocite being the most stable one. However, Cu vacancies can form spontaneously in these compounds, causing instability of Cu2S. We find that under Cu-rich condition, the anilite Cu1.75S is the most stablestructure. It has a predicted bandgap of 1.4 eV and could be a promising solar cell absorber.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2014

Computation studies into architecture and energy transfer properties of photosynthetic units from filamentous anoxygenic phototrophs

We have used different computational methods to study structural architecture, and light-harvesting and energy transfer properties of the photosynthetic unit of filamentous anoxygenic phototrophs. Due to the huge number of atoms in the photosynthetic unit, a combination of atomistic and coarse methods was used for electronic structure calculations. The calculations reveal that the light energy absorbed by the peripheral chlorosome antenna complex transfers efficiently via the baseplate and the core B808–866 antenna complexes to the reaction center complex, in general agreement with the present understanding of this complex system.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2015

Insights in the electronic structure and redox reaction energy in LiFePO{sub 4} battery material from an accurate Tran-Blaha modified Becke Johnson potential

The main goals of this paper are to investigate the accuracy of the Tran-Blaha modified Becke Johnson (TB-mBJ) potential to predict the electronic structure of lithium iron phosphate and the related redox reaction energy with the lithium deintercalation process. The computed electronic structures show that the TB-mBJ method is able to partially localize Fe-3d electrons in LiFePO{sub 4} and FePO{sub 4} which usually is a problem for the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) due to the self interaction error. The energy band gap is also improved by the TB-mBJ calculations in comparison with the GGA results. It turned out, however, that the redox reaction energy evaluated by the TB-mBJ technique is not in good agreement with the measured one. It is speculated that this disagreement in the computed redox energy and the experimental value is due to the lack of a formal expression to evaluate the exchange and correlation energy. Therefore, the TB-mBJ is an efficient method to improve the prediction of the electronic structures coming form the standard GGA functional in LiFePO{sub 4} and FePO{sub 4}. However, it does not appear to have the same efficiency for evaluating the redox reaction energies for the investigated system.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Enzymes and Models. In: XAFS Techniques for Catalysts, Nanomaterials, and Surfaces

Many important redox-active metalloenzymes consist of 3d transition metals in their active sites. They catalyze multi-electron reactions in aqueous solution, under ambient temperature and pressure. To understand the functionality of the catalytic sites of these enzymes, X-ray spectroscopy methods provide important information of the electronic structure of the metal of interest and its local structural information, as well as their changes during the catalysis. Studying model compounds, that mimic enzyme catalytic site structures or their functional mimics, is as critical as studying enzymes themselves, in order to interpret X-ray spectroscopic data. In this chapter, various X-ray spectroscopic methods that are useful for structural and electronic structural studies of enzymes and model compounds are described.

Yachandra, VK↗