Stability of Aqueous Suspensions of COOH-Decorated Carbon Nanotubes to Organic Solvents, Esterification, and Decarboxylation.

Carbon nanotubes are among the most widely used nanosystems, and stability of carbon nanotube suspensions is critical for nanotechnology and environmental science. Remaining in aqueous environment alone misses important factors that regulate colloidal stability in the presence of electrolytes. Indeed, introduction of (80-95) vol % organic solvents leads to sharp changes in suspension properties depending on the solvent. For example, the critical coagulation concentrations for a given inorganic or organic coagulating ion can change by 2 orders of magnitude when going from dimethyl sulfoxide to acetonitrile. We establish and explain these trends by Lewis acid-base interactions and show that a strong interaction extending beyond the standard theory of aggregation plays an important role.

Conversion of He(23 S) to He2( a3Σ u+) in Liquid Helium.

The report of an anomalously intense He4+ peak in electron impact mass spectra of large helium droplets created a stir 3 decades ago that continues to this day. When the electron kinetic energy exceeds 41 eV, an additional pathway opens that yields He4+ predominantly in an electronically excited metastable state. A pair of He*(23 S) atoms has been implicated based on the isolated He* energy of 19.82 eV and the 41 eV threshold, and the creation of He4+ has been conjectured to proceed via a pair of He2*( a3Σ u+) precursors. The mechanism whereby He* converts to He2* in liquid helium has remained a mystery, however. High level ab initio theory combined with classical molecular dynamics has been applied to systems comprising small numbers of He atoms. The conversion of He* to He2* in such systems is shown to be due to a simple many-body effect that yields He2* rapidly and efficiently.

Optoelectronic Properties of Semiconductor Quantum Dot Solids for Photovoltaic Applications.

Quantum dot (QD) solids represent a new type of condensed matter drawing high fundamental and applied interest. Quantum confinement in individual QDs, combined with macroscopic scale whole materials, leads to novel exciton and charge transfer features that are particularly relevant to optoelectronic applications. This Perspective discusses the structure of semiconductor QD solids, optical and spectral properties, charge carrier transport, and photovoltaic applications. The distance between adjacent nanoparticles and surface ligands influences greatly electrostatic interactions between QDs and, hence, charge and energy transfer. It is almost inevitable that QD solids exhibit energetic disorder that bears many similarities to disordered organic semiconductors, with charge and exciton transport described by the multiple trapping model. QD solids are synthesized at low cost from colloidal solutions by casting, spraying, and printing. A judicious selection of a layer sequence involving QDs with different size, composition, and ligands can be used to harvest sunlight over a wide spectral range, leading to inexpensive and efficient photovoltaic devices.

Resolving multi-exciton generation by attosecond spectroscopy.

We propose an experimentally viable attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy scheme to resolve controversies regarding multiexciton (ME) generation in nanoscale systems. Absence of oscillations indicates that light excites single excitons, and MEs are created by incoherent impact ionization. An oscillation indicates the coherent mechanism, involving excitation of superpositions of single and MEs. The oscillation decay, ranging from 5 fs at ambient temperature to 20 fs at 100 K, gives the elastic exciton-phonon scattering time. The signal is best observed with multiple-cycle pump pulses.

Microscopic structure and dynamics of LiBF4 solutions in cyclic and linear carbonates.

Motivated by development of lithium-ion batteries, we study the structure and dynamics of LiBF(4) in pure and mixed solvents with various salt concentrations. For this purpose, we have developed force field models for ethylene carbonate, propylene carbonate, dimethyl carbonate, and dimethoxyethane. We find that Li(+) is preferentially solvated by the cyclic and more polar component of the mixtures, as the electrostatic interaction overcomes possible steric hindrances. The cation coordination number decreases from 6 to 5 with increasing salt concentration due to formation of ion-pairs. The uniform decline of the diffusion coefficients of the two ions is disrupted at mixture compositions that perturb the ion-pair interaction. We show that the Stokes' model of diffusion can be applied to the very small Li(+) ion, provided that the size of the first solvation shell is properly taken into consideration. The strong coordination of the ions by the polar, cyclic components of the solvent mixtures established in our simulations suggests that the less polar linear component can be optimized in order to reduce electrolyte viscosity and to achieve high electrical conductivity.

The spin-polarized extended Brueckner orbitals.

Conventional natural and Brueckner orbitals (BOs) are rather frequently used for improving active orbital spaces in various configuration interaction (CI) approaches. However, the natural and Brueckner single-determinant models per se fail to give an adequate picture of highly correlated and quasidegenerate states such as open-shell singlet and dissociative states. We suggest the use of the spin-polarized extended BOs formally defining them in the same manner as in Löwdin's spin-extended Hartree-Fock method. Such BO orbitals turn out to be quite flexible and particularly useful for analyzing highly correlated electronic states. It is shown that the extended BOs always exist, unlike the usual unrestricted BOs. We discuss difficulties related to violation of size-consistency for spin projected determinant models. The working algorithm is proposed for computing BOs within the full CI and related complete active space methodology. The extended BOs are analyzed in terms of the special density-like matrices associated with spin-up and spin-down BO orbitals. From these density matrices, the corresponding spin-polarization diagrams are produced for effectively unpaired (essentially correlated) electrons. We illustrate the approach by calculations on cyclic hydrogen clusters (H(4), H(6), and H(8)), certain carbene diradicals and monoradicals, and low-lying excited states. The computations show that the BO spin-projected determinant provides a strong overlap with the multi-configurational state even for quasidegenerate states and bond breaking processes.

Hole-particle characterization of coupled-cluster singles and doubles and related models.

The hole-particle analysis introduced in the paper [J. Chem. Phys. 124, 224109 (2006)] is fully described and extended for coupled-cluster models of practical importance. Based on operator renormalization of the conventional amplitudes t(ai) and t(ab,ij), we present a simplified method for estimating the hole-particle density matrices for coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD). With this procedure we convert the first-order density matrix of the configuration interaction (CI) singles and doubles (CISD) model, which lacks size consistency, into an approximately size-consistent expression. This permits us to correctly estimate specific indices for CCSD, including the hole and particle occupation numbers for each atom, the total occupation of holes/particles, and the entropylike measure for effective unpaired geminals. Our calculations for simple diatomic and triatomic systems indicate reasonable agreement with the full CI values. For CCSD and CISD we derive special types of two-center indices, which are similar to the charge transfer analysis of excited states previously given within the CIS model. These new quantities, termed charge transfer correlation indices, reveal the concealed effects of atomic influence on electronic redistribution due to electron correlation.

Analysis of multiconfigurational wave functions in terms of hole-particle distributions.

A detailed study of hole-particle distributions in many-electron molecular systems is presented, based on a representation of the high-order density matrices obtained by an operator technique reminiscent of Bogolyubov's quantum statistical operator theory. A rigorous definition of density matrices of arbitrary order is given for a composite system of holes and particles. Particular attention is focused on the description of mixed hole-particle distributions. The main results are given as the functionals of excitation operators (generators) that are used in the conventional configuration interaction (CI) and coupled cluster (CC) theories. Local atomic occupation numbers for holes and particles are introduced to provide a measure of the participation of specific atoms in the electron correlation processes. The corresponding total occupations--as well as the hole-hole, particle-particle, and hole-particle mean distances--provide a useful and physically intuitive description of electron correlation. Suitable computational schemes for numerical evaluation of the above characteristics within full CI and typical CC approaches are presented. The insights one can gain with the developed approach into the peculiarities and nuances of the hole-particle picture in typical electronic processes such as excitation and molecular dissociation are illustrated with specific computations on small molecules and closed-shell atoms.

Quantum backreaction through the Bohmian particle.

A novel solution to the quantum backreaction problem in a mixed quantum-classical simulation is provided using the Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Bohmian backreaction is unique, computationally simple, features reaction channel branching, and easily gives the full classical limit. The Bohmian quantum-classical method is illustrated by application to a model of O2 interacting with a Pt surface.