Quantum hardware calculations of the activation and dissociation of nitrogen on iron clusters and surfaces.

Catalytic processes are the cornerstone of chemical industry, and catalytic conversion of nitrogen to ammonia remains one of the largest industrial processes implemented. Rational design of catalysts and catalytic reactions largely depends on approximate computational chemistry methods, such as density functional theory, which, however, suffer from limited accuracy, especially for strongly-correlated materials. Rigorous ab initio methods which account for static and dynamic electron correlation, while arbitrarily accurate for small systems, are generally too expensive to be applied to modelling of catalytic cycles, due to prohibitive time and space computational complexity with respect to the size of the active space. Recent advances in quantum computing give hope for enabling access to accurate ab initio methods at scale. Herein, we present a prototype hybrid quantum-classical workflow for modeling chemical reactions on surfaces, applied to proof-of-concept models of activation and dissociation of nitrogen on small Fe clusters and a single-layer (221) iron surface. First, we determined the structures of species present in the catalytic cycle at DFT level and studied their electronic structure using CASSCF. We show that it is possible to decouple the half-filled Fe-3d band from the Fe-N and N-N bond orbitals, thereby reducing the active space significantly. Subsequently, we translated the CASSCF wavefunctions into corresponding qubit quantum states, using the Adaptive Variational Quantum Eigensolver, and estimated their energies using a state vector simulator, H1-1E quantum emulator and (for selected systems) H1-1 quantum computer. We demonstrated that if a sufficiently small active orbital space is chosen, ground state energies obtained with classical methods and with the quantum computer are in reasonable agreement. We argue that once quantum computing methods are scaled up so that larger active spaces are accessible, they can offer a tremendous practical advantage to the computational catalysis community.

Structural stability and uniformity of magnetic Pt13 nanoparticles in NaY zeolite.

Based on first-principles calculations, the structural stability and magnetic variety of Pt13 nanoparticles encapsulated in a NaY zeolite are investigated. Among 50 stable isomers in the gas phase, due to geometrical constraints, only about 1/3 of those clusters can be inserted in the zeolite pores. Severe structural rearrangements occur depending on whether the solid angle at the Pt vertex bound to the super-cage is larger than 2 sr (i.e., icosahedron). The most relevant example is the structural instability of the icosahedron and, when including van der Waals dispersion forces the opening of the gas phase global minimum moves towards a new L-shaped cubic wire, otherwise unstable. The total magnetisation of the encapsulated Pt13 decreases due to the stabilisation of less coordinated isomers, with the majority of clusters characterised by a total magnetisation of 2µB, while the majority of free clusters exhibit a threefold value. This analysis allows the understanding of the magnetic behaviour observed in recent experiments through the variety of the isomers which can be accommodated in the zeolite pore.

Modeling the melting of multicomponent systems: the case of MgSiO3 perovskite under lower mantle conditions.

Knowledge of the melting properties of materials, especially at extreme pressure conditions, represents a long-standing scientific challenge. For instance, there is currently considerable uncertainty over the melting temperatures of the high-pressure mantle mineral, bridgmanite (MgSiO3-perovskite), with current estimates of the melting T at the base of the mantle ranging from 4800 K to 8000 K. The difficulty with experimentally measuring high pressure melting temperatures has motivated the use of ab initio methods, however, melting is a complex multi-scale phenomenon and the timescale for melting can be prohibitively long. Here we show that a combination of empirical and ab-initio molecular dynamics calculations can be used to successfully predict the melting point of multicomponent systems, such as MgSiO3 perovskite. We predict the correct low-pressure melting T, and at high-pressure we show that the melting temperature is only 5000 K at 120 GPa, a value lower than nearly all previous estimates. In addition, we believe that this strategy is of general applicability and therefore suitable for any system under physical conditions where simpler models fail.

Geometrical Effects on the Magnetic Properties of Nanoparticles.

Elucidating the connection between shape and properties is a challenging but essential task for a rational design of nanoparticles at the atomic level. As a paradigmatic example we investigate how geometry can influence the magnetic properties of nanoparticles, focusing in particular on platinum clusters of 1-2 nm in size. Through first-principle calculations, we have found that the total magnetization depends strongly on the local atomic arrangements. This is due to a contraction of the nearest neighbor distance together with an elongation of the second nearest neighbor distance, resulting in an interatomic partial charge transfer from the atoms lying on the subsurface layer (donors) toward the vertexes (acceptors).

Oxygen adsorption on small PtNi nanoalloys.

The adsorption of an oxygen molecule on nanoclusters of Pt and PtNi, in the size range between 13 and 55 atoms, has been studied using first-principle simulations. The structures have been obtained as a function of size and chemical composition of the clusters by means of the parallel excitable-walkers basin hopping method. O(2) preferentially adsorbs along the edge between two (111) facets due to a massive distortion of the Pt-Pt bond length. This bond elongation favours the adsorption in such a way that the binding energy of oxygen on a pure 55-atom cluster is still twice the value on the clean Pt(111). On the other hand, on 55-Pt(shell)Ni(core) nanoparticles, the O(2) binding energy is slightly lower than on Pt(111), because nickel core inhibits the stretching of the Pt-bond because of their size mismatch. However, as soon as its concentration is increased, Ni appears at the surface and its oxyphilic nature contributes to bind the oxygen molecule stronger.

Br2(X) microsolvation in helium clusters: effect of the interaction on the quantum solvent density distribution.

The Born-Oppenheimer potential energy surface for the Br2(X) molecule interacting with a varying number of 4He bosons is constructed following two different schemes which employ either a full ab initio evaluation of the Br2-He interaction forces or an estimate of the latter through an empirical model. Both descriptions are employed by carrying out diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) calculations of the ground-state energies and quantum wavefunctions for Br2-(He)n clusters with n up to 24. The results clearly indicate, for both interactions, the occurrence of the full solvation of the molecular dopant within the quantum bosonic "solvent" but also show differences between the two models in terms of the expected density distributions of the surrounding particles within the shorter-range region that makes up the clusters with smaller n values. Our calculations also show that such differences become insignificant for the larger 4He clusters surrounding the Br2 molecule, where density profiles and bulk behaviour are chiefly driven by the solvent structure, once n values reach the region of 15-20 adatoms.