Electrolytes in regimes of strong confinement: surface charge modulations, osmotic equilibrium and electroneutrality.

In the present work, we study an electrolyte solution confined between planar surfaces with nanopatterned charged domains, which has been connected to a bulk ionic reservoir. The system is investigated through an improved Monte Carlo (MC) simulation method, suitable for simulation of electrolytes in the presence of modulated surface charge distributions. We also employ a linear approach in the spirit of the classical Debye-Hückel approximation, which allows one to obtain explicit expressions for the averaged potentials, ionic profiles, effective surface interactions and the net ionic charge confined between the walls. Emphasis is placed on the limit of strongly confined electrolytes, in which case local electroneutrality in the inter-surface space might not be fulfilled. In order to access the effects of such a lack of local charge neutrality on the ion-induced interactions between surfaces with modulated charge domains, we consider two distinct model systems for the confined electrolyte: one in which a salt reservoir is explicitly taken into account via the osmotic equilibrium with an electrolyte of fixed bulk concentration, and a second one in which the equilibrium with a charge neutral ionic reservoir is implicitly considered. While in the former case the osmotic ion exchange might lead to non-vanishing net charges, in the latter model charge neutrality is enforced through the appearance of an implicit Donnan potential across the charged interfaces. A strong dependence of the ion-induced surface interactions on the employed model system is observed at all surface separations. These findings strongly suggest that due care is to be taken while choosing among different scenarios to describe the ion exchange in electrolytes confined between charged surfaces, even in cases when the monopole (non zero net charge) surface contributions are absent.

Evaluation of Electron Donation as a Mechanism for the Stabilisation of Chalcogenate-Protected Gold Nanoclusters.

Models based on Au(111) face have been extensively used to describe self-assembled monolayers, as well nanoparticles and nanoclusters. However, for very small clusters (<2 nm), the chemisorption of ligands leads to surface reconstruction, making necessary the use of a more reliable model that is able to simulate the main electronic and geometrical features of these small systems. In this work, a simple model to describe the geometries and the metal-ligand bonding in chalcogenate-protected gold nanoclusters is proposed. Three different models with Aun+ and [XCH3 ]- (n=10, 15, 19, 22 and X=S, Se, Te) are used in this work. The obtained structures are in close agreement not only with the available crystallographic data, but also with much more expensive computational procedures, confirming that the proposed models are robust enough to describe the metal-ligand bonding. The results reveal that the Au-X distances are dependent on both the nature of the chalcogen and the coordination mode. The shortest Au-X distances are observed in the face-centred cubic mode, indicating that the central gold atom seems to play a role in determining the adsorption strength. The proposed models show unambiguously chalcogen→cluster σ-donation, as supported by energy decomposition analysis coupled with the natural orbitals for chemical valence and natural bond orbital analyses. In all cases, the metal-ligand interactions are characterised as being more covalent than electrostatic.

Cyclic trinuclear copper(I), silver(I), and gold(I) complexes: a theoretical insight.

The metal-ligand, M-L, bonding situation in cyclic trinuclear complexes, CTCs, of copper(I), silver(I), and gold(I) was investigated in terms of the energy decomposition analysis (EDA-NOCV) and natural bond orbitals (NBOs). The anisotropy of the induced current density (ACID) and magnetic response were employed to evaluate the effect of electronic conjugation and metal-metal interactions in CTCs. The EDA-NOCV results show that the M-L bonding is stronger in gold(I) than in copper(I) or silver(I) complexes. Au(+)-L bonds present an elevated covalent character when compared with Cu(+)-L and Ag(+)-L bonds. The NBO analysis confirms the elevated covalent character observed for Au(+)-L bonds, indicating that the ligand-metal donation, L → M, and the metal-ligand back-donation, M → L, are more stabilizing in gold(I) than in copper(I) or silver(I) complexes. Both ACID and the magnetic response calculations reveal that there are cyclic conjugations in the ligands and a strong diatropic ring current indicating the presence of aromaticity. However, there is no through-bond M-L conjugation between the ligands and the metallic centers, as indicated by the absence of a continuous anisotropy boundary surface involving M-L bonds.