RESUMO
We utilized nanoporous mayenite (12CaO·7Al2O3), a cost-effective material, in the hydride state (H-) to explore the possibility of its use for hydrogen storage and transportation. Hydrogen desorption occurs by a simple reaction of mayenite with water, and the nanocage structure transforms into a calcium aluminate hydrate. This reaction enables easy desorption of H- ions trapped in the structure, which could allow the use of this material in future portable applications. Additionally, this material is 100% recyclable because the cage structure can be recovered by heat treatment after hydrogen desorption. The presence of hydrogen molecules as H- ions was confirmed by 1H-NMR, gas chromatography, and neutron diffraction analyses. We confirmed the hydrogen state stability inside the mayenite cage by the first-principles calculations to understand the adsorption mechanism and storage capacity and to provide a key for the use of mayenite as a portable hydrogen storage material. Further, we succeeded in introducing H- directly from OH- by a simple process compared with previous studies that used long treatment durations and required careful control of humidity and oxygen gas to form O2 species before the introduction of H-.
RESUMO
We report the result of a large-scale first-principles molecular dynamics simulation under different electric biases performed to understand the charge transfer process coupling with lithium deposition and desolvation processes. We applied the effective screening medium (ESM) method to control the bias across the electrode/solution interface, and simulated a series of Li de-solvation and Li-deposition reactions occurring under the bias. Solvated Li+ in the bulk propylene carbonate migrates to the Si electrode surface and gradually de-solvates through the transition state. Introducing the blue-moon ensemble method, we determined the possible structures and activation energies for the transition states.
RESUMO
An efficient method of calculating the natural bond orbitals (NBOs) based on a truncation of the entire density matrix of a whole system is presented for large-scale density functional theory calculations. The method recovers an orbital picture for O(N) electronic structure methods which directly evaluate the density matrix without using Kohn-Sham orbitals, thus enabling quantitative analysis of chemical reactions in large-scale systems in the language of localized Lewis-type chemical bonds. With the density matrix calculated by either an exact diagonalization or O(N) method, the computational cost is O(1) for the calculation of NBOs associated with a local region where a chemical reaction takes place. As an illustration of the method, we demonstrate how an electronic structure in a local region of interest can be analyzed by NBOs in a large-scale first-principles molecular dynamics simulation for a liquid electrolyte bulk model (propylene carbonate + LiBF4).
RESUMO
A method for large-scale first-principles molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on electrochemical systems has been developed by combining the effective screening medium (ESM) method with O(N) density functional theory (DFT). This implementation has been significantly simplified by the introduction of neutral atom potentials, which minimizes the modifications to existing DFT code. In order to demonstrate ability of this implementation, it has been applied to an electrochemical system consisting of a H-Si(111) electrode, which is a candidate anode for high-capacity Li-ion secondary batteries, and a propylene carbonate (PC) solvent to simulate how PC molecules in the vicinity of the electrode surface respond to an imposed electric field. The large-scale MD simulation clearly demonstrates that the combination of the ESM and O(N) DFT methods provides a useful tool for first-principles investigation of complicated electrochemical systems such as high-capacity batteries.
