Neutron powder diffraction and molecular simulation study of the structural evolution of ammonia borane from 15 to 340 K.

The structural behavior of (11)B-, (2)H-enriched ammonia borane, ND(3)(11)BD(3), over the temperature range from 15 to 340 K was investigated using a combination of neutron powder diffraction and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. In the low temperature orthorhombic phase, the progressive displacement of the borane group under the amine group was observed leading to the alignment of the B-N bond near parallel to the c-axis. The orthorhombic to tetragonal structural phase transition at 225 K is marked by dramatic change in the dynamics of both the amine and borane group. The resulting hydrogen disorder is problematic to extract from the metrics provided by Rietveld refinement but is readily apparent in molecular dynamics simulation and in difference Fourier transform maps. At the phase transition, Rietveld refinement does indicate a disruption of one of two dihydrogen bonds that link adjacent ammonia borane molecules. Metrics determined by Rietveld refinement are in excellent agreement with those determined from molecular simulation. This study highlights the valuable insights added by coupled experimental and computational studies.

Experimental and computational studies on collective hydrogen dynamics in ammonia borane: incoherent inelastic neutron scattering.

Incoherent inelastic neutron scattering is used to probe the effects of dihydrogen bonding on the vibrational dynamics in the molecular crystal of ammonia borane. The thermal neutron energy loss spectra of (11)B enriched ammonia borane isotopomers ((11)BH(3)NH(3), (11)BD(3)NH(3), and (11)BH(3)ND(3)) are presented and compared to the vibrational power spectrum calculated using ab initio molecular dynamics. A harmonic vibrational analysis on NH(3)BH(3) clusters was also explored to check for consistency with experiment and the power spectrum. The measured neutron spectra and computed ab initio power spectrum compare extremely well (50-500 cm(-1)). Some assignment of modes to simple harmonic motion, e.g., NH(3) and BH(3) torsion in the molecular crystal is possible, and it is confirmed that the lowest modes are dominated by collective motion. We show that the vibrational dynamics as modeled with ab initio molecular dynamics provides a more complete description of anharmonic and collective dynamics in the low frequency region of the inelastic incoherent neutron scattering spectra when compared to the conventional harmonic approach.