Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “coordination complex”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,243 records · Page 69

First-Principles Approach to Extracting Chemical Information from X-ray Absorption Near-Edge Spectra of Ga-Containing Materials

The X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) can provide uniquely detailed information on the coordination environments of important Ga-containing materials with unknown structures, including catalytically active materials. In this work, the Ga K-edge XANES was simulated using first-principles-based methods for seven molecular Ga complexes as well β-Ga 2 O 3 , in order to explore the chemical origins of the experimentally observed features. The theoretical spectra were computed using FEFF, CASTEP, and StoBe, to assess the sensitivity of the results to the computational approach. While the XANES features depend on the Ga coordination environment, they are also sensitive to the electronegativity of the ligands and the symmetry at Ga. The white line position responds to changes in both the core state (due to differential screening) and the valence “p” states (arising from differences in ligand coordination).

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Wavelength-Dependent Energy and Charge Transfer in MOF: A Step toward Artificial Porous Light-Harvesting System

Chromophore assemblies within well-defined porous coordination polymers, such as metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), can emulate the functionality of the antenna rings of chlorophylls in light-harvesting complexes (LHCs). The chemical, electronic, and structural diversities define MOFs as a promising platform where photogenerated excitons can be displaced to redox catalysts similar to the reaction center of the LHC. The precise positioning of the pigments and complementary redox units enables us to understand the charge/energy-transfer process within these crystalline solid compositions. In this study, we postsynthetically anchored tetraphenylporphyrinato zinc(II) (TPPZn)-derived complementary pigment within the 1D pores of 1,3,6,8-tetrakis(p-benzoicacid)pyrene (H4TBAPy)-derived NU-1000 MOF to form a high-density donor–acceptor system. The ground- and excited-state redox potentials of the donor and acceptor were chosen to facilitate an energy transfer (EnT) from the excited MOF (i.e., NU-1000*) to TPPZn and a charge transfer (CT) from excited porphyrin (i.e., TPPZn*). Thus, the processes depend on the excitation wavelength. The energy transfer process was spectroscopically probed by excitation–emission mapping: MOF emission was completely quenched at 460 nm, where the pyrene-centered emission was expected. Instead, the excited MOF efficiently transfers the energy to manifest a TPPZn-centered emission at 670 nm (k EnT ≈ 4.7 × 10 11 s–1). The excited TPPZn pigment, with a neighboring TBAPy linker, forms an artificial “special-pair”-like system driving the charge-separation process (k CT = 1.2 × 10 10 s –1 ). The findings demonstrate a synthetic MOF-based artificial LHC system where their well-defined structure will open up new possibilities as the separated charge can hop along the 1D pore channel for further mechanistic understanding and future developments.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Tackling Disorder in γ‐Ga 2 O 3

Abstract Ga 2 O 3 and its polymorphs are attracting increasing attention. The rich structural space of polymorphic oxide systems such as Ga 2 O 3 offers potential for electronic structure engineering, which is of particular interest for a range of applications, such as power electronics. γ‐Ga 2 O 3 presents a particular challenge across synthesis, characterization, and theory due to its inherent disorder and resulting complex structure–electronic‐structure relationship. Here, density functional theory is used in combination with a machine‐learning approach to screen nearly one million potential structures, thereby developing a robust atomistic model of the γ‐phase. Theoretical results are compared with surface and bulk sensitive soft and hard X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X‐ray absorption spectroscopy, spectroscopic ellipsometry, and photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy experiments representative of the occupied and unoccupied states of γ‐Ga 2 O 3 . The first onset of strong absorption at room temperature is found at 5.1 eV from spectroscopic ellipsometry, which agrees well with the excitation maximum at 5.17 eV obtained by photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy, where the latter shifts to 5.33 eV at 5 K. This work presents a leap forward in the treatment of complex, disordered oxides and is a crucial step toward exploring how their electronic structure can be understood in terms of local coordination and overall structure.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Linker Redox Mediated Control of Morphology and Properties in Semiconducting Iron‐Semiquinoid Coordination Polymers**

Abstract The emergence of conductive 2D and less commonly 3D coordination polymers (CPs) and metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) promises novel applications in many fields. However, the synthetic parameters for these electronically complex materials are not thoroughly understood. Here we report a new 3D semiconducting CP Fe 5 (C 6 O 6 ) 3 , which is a fusion of 2D Fe‐semiquinoid materials and 3D cubic Fe x (C 6 O 6 ) y materials, by using a different initial redox‐state of the C 6 O 6 linker. The material displays high electrical conductivity (0.02 S cm −1 ), broad electronic transitions, promising thermoelectric behavior ( S 2 σ=7.0×10 −9 W m −1 K −2 ), and strong antiferromagnetic interactions at room temperature. This material illustrates how controlling the oxidation states of redox‐active components in conducting CPs/MOFs can be a “pre‐synthetic” strategy to carefully tune material topologies and properties in contrast to more commonly encountered post‐synthetic modifications.

Wang, Lei↗

Structure-Sensitive Scaling Relations: Adsorption Energies from Surface Site Stability

Here, the design of heterogeneous catalysts is accelerated by the identification of thermochemical reactivity descriptors, which enable the prediction of promising materials through efficient screening. Motivated by previous discoveries of linear scaling relations between the adsorption energies of related atoms and molecules, we present a new scaling between the adsorption energies of metal atoms and metal–adsorbate complexes, which can be used to directly predict catalytically relevant molecular adsorption energies. In contrast to existing models based on the coordination number of surface atoms alone, our model can predict adsorption energies with site–by–site resolution considering local structural effects and also has potential extensions to include contributions of neighboring metal identity in alloy systems. Integration of this scaling with a previously identified model for metal–metal interactions enables the accurate prediction of molecular adsorption energies on nanoparticles by performing only a small set of slab–based calculations.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

An unstructured body-of-revolution electromagnetic particle-in-cell algorithm with radial perfectly matched layers and dual polarizations

A novel electromagnetic particle-in-cell algorithm has been developed for fully kinetic plasma simulations on unstructured (irregular) meshes in complex body-of-revolution geometries. The algorithm, implemented in the BORPIC++ code, utilizes a set of field scalings and a coordinate mapping, reducing the Maxwell field problem in a cylindrical system to a Cartesian finite element Maxwell solver in the meridian plane. The latter obviates the cylindrical coordinate singularity in the symmetry axis. The choice of an unstructured finite element discretization enhances the geometrical flexibility of the BORPIC++ solver compared to the more traditional finite difference solvers. Symmetries in Maxwell’s equations are explored to decompose the problem into two dual polarization states with isomorphic representations that enable code reuse. The particle-in-cell scatter and gather steps preserve charge conservation at the discrete level. Our previous algorithm (BORPIC+) discretized the E and B field components of TE Φ and TM Φ polarizations on the finite element (primal) mesh. Here, we employ a new field-update scheme. Using the same finite element (primal) mesh, this scheme advances two sets of field components independently: (1) E and B of TE Φ polarized fields, (E z , E ρ , B Φ ) and (2) D and H of TM Φ polarized fields, (D Φ , H z , H ρ ). Since these field updates are not explicitly coupled, the new field solver obviates the coordinate singularity, which otherwise arises at the cylindrical symmetric axis, ρ = 0 when defining the discrete Hodge matrices (generalized finite element mass matrices). Here, a cylindrical perfectly matched layer is implemented as a boundary condition in the radial direction to simulate open space problems, with periodic boundary conditions in the axial direction. We investigate effects of charged particles moving next to the cylindrical perfectly matched layer. We model azimuthal currents arising from rotational motion of charged rings, which produce TMΦ polarized fields. Several numerical examples are provided to illustrate the first application of the algorithm.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Watershed Workflow: A toolset for parameterizing data-intensive, integrated hydrologic models

Integrated, distributed hydrologic models leverage advances in computational power and data accessibility to improve predictive understanding of the water cycle. While impressive advances in this area of environmental modeling have been accomplished, such models are still rarely used, partially because of difficulty integrating model and data. This research describes the release of Watershed Workflow version 1.2, a new library aiming to automate and enable complex workflows defining inputs to high resolution, integrated, distributed hydrologic models. Watershed Workflow provides tools enabling the discovery, acquisition, mapping, and coordination of watershed geometry, land cover, soil properties, and meteorological data. It enables the construction of unstructured meshes that incorporate this data, and provides tools for automating a “first” simulation on any watershed in the United States. We present the design of the workflow tool, and describe best practices for its usage, culminating in a final example from watershed specification to simulation at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory.

Integrated hydrologic modeling↗

Examination of lutetium(III)-DOTA and copper(II)-NOTA solution structures using EXAFS

Targeted radionuclide therapy generally relies on the chelation of select short-lived isotopes such as 177 Lu and 67 Cu. The majority of Lu(III) and Cu(II) chelate structural information is derived from solid state diffraction data. Herein, the complexes Lu(DOTA) - , Cu(NOTA) - were examined in solution using EXAFS for the first time. Both ligands were fully deprotonated and coordinated to the metal with four and three carboxylic sites for Lu(DOTA) - and Cu(NOTA) - , respectively. Near-neighbor correlations from nitrogen atoms on the macrocyclic cages were also visible in the spectra in addition to the adjacent carbon backbones. Coordination numbers, bond distances, and Debye-Waller factors are reported and discussed alongside differences with known crystal structures.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

Trivalent f-Element Squarates, Squarate-Oxalates, and Cationic Materials, and the Determination of the Nine-Coordinate Ionic Radius of Cf(III)

The synthesis, structure, and solid-state UV–vis–NIR spectroscopy of four new f-element squarates, M 2 (C 4 O 4 ) 3 (H 2 O) 4 (M = Eu, Am, Cf) and Sm(C 4 O 4 )(C 4 O 3 OH)(H 2 O) 2 ·0.5H 2 O, four new cationic lanthanide squarate chlorides, [M 4 (C 4 O 4 ) 5 (H 2 O) 12 ]Cl 2 ·5H 2 O (M = Eu, Dy, Ho Er), and two new actinide squarate oxalates, M 2 (C 4 O 4 ) 2 (C 2 O 4 )(H 2 O) 4 (M = Am, Cf), are presented. All of the metal centers are trivalent. Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis reveals that M 2 (C 4 O 4 ) 3 (H 2 O) 4 and Sm(C 4 O 4 )(C 4 O 3 OH)(H 2 O) 2 ·0.5H 2 O have a two-dimensional sheet structure constructed from MO 7 (H 2 O) 2 monocapped square-antiprismatic (coordination number (CN) = 9) metal centers and SmO 6 (H 2 O) 2 square-antiprismatic (CN = 8) metal centers, respectively, whereas M 2 (C 4 O 4 ) 2 (C 2 O 4 )(H 2 O) 4 have a three-dimensional (3D) structure constructed from MO 7 (H 2 O) 2 monocapped square-antiprismatic (CN = 9) metal centers. Additionally, the cationic framework materials [M 4 (C 4 O 4 ) 5 (H 2 O) 12 ]Cl 2 ·5H 2 O have a 3D structure constructed from two crystallographically unique MO 5 (H 2 O) 3 square-antiprismatic (CN = 8) metal centers. In these structures, the squarate ligands bind to the metal centers with varying coordination modes and denticities. The results of this study provide another example of the nonparallel chemistry between the lanthanides and transplutonium elements. From the crystallographic data for the isotypic series M 2 (C 4 O 4 ) 3 (H 2 O) 4 (M = La–Nd, Sm, Eu) and the linear regression fit to a plot of the unit cell volume as a function of the cube of the ionic radius, the nine-coordinate ionic radius of Cf 3+ was determined to be 1.127 ± 0.003 Å. Lastly, computational analysis of the americium and californium complexes M 2 (C 4 O 4 ) 3 (H 2 O) 4 and M 2 (C 4 O 4 ) 2 (C 2 O 4 )(H 2 O) 4 reveals three important attributes: (i) the 5f orbitals are nonbonding in all cases, with the bonding differences occurring with the empty 6d orbitals; (ii) the Cf complexes exhibit more covalent character than their Am counterparts; and (iii) there is more covalent character in the squarate-oxalate complexes than in the squarate complexes.

Crystallography↗

Insights into Copper Sulfide Formation from Cu and S K edge XAS and DFT studies

An understanding of the fundamentals of the reaction between CuO with trace amounts of H 2 S to form CuS products is critical for the optimal utilization of this process in sulfur removal applications. Unfortunately, CuS is a complex material, featuring various Cu 2-x S compounds (with 0 ≤ x ≤ 1), distorted crystal phases, and varying electronic structures and coordination environments of Cu and S ions. In this work, we combine ex situ and in situ X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) at S and Cu K edges, fixed bed sorption experiments, DFT simulations, and other characterization techniques to speciate the CuS products formed at different temperatures (298–383 K) and from CuO sorbents with different crystallite sizes (2.8–40 nm). The results of our analysis identify the formation of a distorted CuS layer at the surface of CuO crystals with disulfide groups with shorter Cu–S bonds and higher delocalization of the positive charge of the Cu center into (S 1– )2. This distorted CuS layer dominates the XAS signal at lower temperatures (298–323 K) and at the initial stages of sulfidation at higher temperatures (353 and 383 K) where conversion is low (<40%). First-principles atomistic simulations confirm the thermodynamic favorability of the formation of surface (S 1– )2 on both CuO (111) and ($\bar{1}11$) surfaces, providing further support for our experimental observations. Furthermore, these simulations reveal that the presence of disulfide bonds stabilized surface hydroxyl groups, leading to lower Gibbs Free Energies of their surface migration.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Identifying Cu( ii )–amyloid peptide binding intermediates in the early stages of aggregation by resonance Raman spectroscopy: a simulation study

The aggregation of amyloid beta (Aβ) peptides plays a crucial role in the pathology and etiology of Alzheimer's disease. Experimental evidence shows that copper ion is an aggregation-prone species with the ability to coordinately bind to Aβ and further induce the formation of neurotoxic Aβ oligomers. However, the detailed structures of Cu(II)–Aβ complexes have not been illustrated, and the kinetics and dynamics of the Cu(II) binding are not well understood. Two Cu(II)–Aβ complexes have been proposed to exist under physiological conditions, and another two might exist at higher pH values. By using ab initio simulations for the spontaneous resonance Raman and time domain stimulated resonance Raman spectroscopy signals, we obtained the characteristic Raman vibronic features of each complex. Finally, these signals contain rich structural information with high temporal resolution, enabling the characterization of transient states during the fast Cu–Aβ binding and interconversion processes.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Joint X-ray/neutron structure of Lentinus similis AA9_A at room temperature

Lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) are copper metalloenzymes which cleave polysaccharides oxidatively and are important in pathogen biology, carbon cycling and biotechnology. The Lentinus similis family AA9 isoform A (LsAA9_A) has been extensively studied as a model system because its activity towards smaller soluble saccharide substrates has allowed detailed structural characterization of its interaction with a variety of substrates by X-ray crystallography at high resolution. Here, the joint X-ray/neutron room-temperature crystallographic structure of carbohydrate-free LsAA9_A in the copper(II) resting state refined against X-ray and neutron data at 2.1 and 2.8 Å resolution, respectively, is presented. The results provide an experimental determination of the protonation states of the copper(II)-coordinating residues and second-shell residues in LsAA9_A, paving the way for future neutron crystallographic studies of LPMO–carbohydrate complexes.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Materials research and development needs to enable efficient and electrified buildings

Because of the complexity of modern buildings—with many interconnected materials, components, and systems—fully electrifying buildings will require targeted R&D and efficient coordination across those material, component, and system levels. Because buildings that consume the smallest amount of energy are easier to electrify, energy efficiency is a crucial step toward fully electrified buildings. Materials advances will play an important role in both reducing the energy intensity of buildings and electrifying their remaining energy use. Materials are currently being explored, discovered, synthesized, evaluated, optimized, and implemented across many building components, including solid-state lighting; dynamic windows and opaque envelopes; cold climate heat pumps; thermal energy storage; heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC); refrigeration; non-vapor compression HVAC; and more. In this article, we review the current state-of-the-art of materials for various buildings end uses and discuss R&D challenges and opportunities for both efficiency and electrification.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Modelling the Liquid Waste Operation at the Savannah River Site

Modeling Successes Dounreay – Site Closure Optimization and Risk Reduction Re-structuring and streamlining a complex project plan to achieve site decommissioning in reduced time and at reduced cost, through automated task prioritization. Idaho AMWTP – Multi-stream Optimization Speeding up a complex facility with many process lines, by utilizing all of the process lines more efficiently and reducing overall plant downtime, by coordinating repairs and shutdowns. AWE –Waste Repackaging and Relocation Relocating schedule for waste material from an old storage facility to a new purpose-built one, safely, and in a timely fashion that removed the need to reassure the safety of the old facility. Sellafield – Effluent, Sludge and HAW Treatment Improving a wide range of chemical engineered processes including aqueous effluent treatment, chemically-reactive sludge management and waste vitrification processing. Strategic Petroleum Reserve – Cavern Management Linking chemistry models of petroleum prediction, through engineering cavern management to financial modeling of gasoline sales to benefit US government

Jung, Andrew W.↗

Operating systems

A counter operating system creates a hierarchy of levels of abstraction, so that at a given level all details concerning lower levels can be ignored. This hierarchical structure separates functions according to their complexity, characteristic time scale, and level of abstraction. The lowest levels include the system's hardware; concepts associated explicitly with the coordination of multiple tasks appear at intermediate levels, which conduct 'primitive processes'. Software semaphore is the mechanism controlling primitive processes that must be synchronized. At higher levels lie, in rising order, the access to the secondary storage devices of a particular machine, a 'virtual memory' scheme for managing the main and secondary memories, communication between processes by way of a mechanism called a 'pipe', access to external input and output devices, and a hierarchy of directories cataloguing the hardware and software objects to which access must be controlled.

Denning, P. J.↗

Determining robot actions for tasks requiring sensor interaction

The performance of non-trivial tasks by a mobile robot has been a long term objective of robotic research. One of the major stumbling blocks to this goal is the conversion of the high-level planning goals and commands into the actuator and sensor processing controls. In order for a mobile robot to accomplish a non-trivial task, the task must be described in terms of primitive actions of the robot's actuators. Most non-trivial tasks require the robot to interact with its environment; thus necessitating coordination of sensor processing and actuator control to accomplish the task. The main contention is that the transformation from the high level description of the task to the primitive actions should be performed primarily at execution time, when knowledge about the environment can be obtained through sensors. It is proposed to produce the detailed plan of primitive actions by using a collection of low-level planning components that contain domain specific knowledge and knowledge about the available sensors, actuators, and sensor/actuator processing. This collection will perform signal and control processing as well as serve as a control interface between an actual mobile robot and a high-level planning system. Previous research has shown the usefulness of high-level planning systems to plan the coordination of activities such to achieve a goal, but none have been fully applied to actual mobile robots due to the complexity of interacting with sensors and actuators. This control interface is currently being implemented on a LABMATE mobile robot connected to a SUN workstation and will be developed such to enable the LABMATE to perform non-trivial, sensor-intensive tasks as specified by a planning system.

Budenske, John↗

On an adaptive truss manipulator space crane concept

The paper describes an adaptive truss manipulator (ATM) space crane concept for in-space assembly and construction. The underlying mechanism of an ATM is that the batten members of the constituent octahedral modules are controllable in length. Through geometric transformations of the constituent modules, the basic manipulator functions such as articulation can be performed by the ATM. The mechanism can also provide deployment/retraction, high dexterity motion, and bracing operation. The advantages of an ATM over the conventional multijoint-multilink anthropomorphic manipulator are its compact stowage volume for in-space storage and mobility, deployment as needed, high dexterity in complex workspace, and high redundancy of the actuator function. The kinematic description of an ATM is formulated in the global cartesian coordinate system.

Chen, Gun-Shing↗