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- Du, Dou, 1988-
(författare)
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Oxygen Storage Chemistry of Nanoceria
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The versatile redox chemistry of ceria (CeO2) originates from its Ce4f electron, which plays the key role in changing the oxidation state of Ce between +IV and +III. Ceria is, among other things, a material that can act as a powerful oxygen buffer with a high oxygen storage capacity (OSC). This is used in many technical applications, such as the three-way catalyst, cleaning exhausts from gasoline vehicles. This thesis is concerned with the dramatic OSC effect observed experimentally in the literature for very small ceria nanoparticles (NPs) at lower temperatures, where the effect was found to be accompanied by the formation of superoxide ions (O2–).The main aim of the thesis work was to develop strategies to allow us to discover the origin of the OSC phenomenon, and to simulate temperature-programmed reduction (TPR) and temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) experiments and collect useful mechanistic insight about these processes. Quantum-mechanical (DFT) calculations, partly with modified DFT functionals, and later augmented by microkinetic (MK) modelling building on the DFT-results, made it possible to model the large and complex NP systems needed to make detailed comparisons between theory and experiment feasible.At first, a suitable DFT functional for nanoceria was needed. We turned to hybrid functionals, and more specifically, the non-local Fock exchange contribution within the hybrid functional HSE06 was explored. The amount that gave the best overall description was determined (15%, labeled HSE06' below) and was used in subsequent studies. Moreover, an accompanying HSE06'//PBE+U computational protocol was constructed (HSE06' energies calculated for pre-optimized structures at the PBE+U level); this made it possible to use the hybrid functional for large ceria systems.With the modified HSE functional, we scrutinized a previously proposed OSC model, namely the "supercharge" model for nanoparticles loaded on the outside with superoxide ions at low-coordinated ridge sites, enabled by the oxidation of Ce3+ to Ce4+. In the previous study, adsorption energies were calculated using the PBE+U density functional, which does not give adsorption energies in agreement with experiment. With the new HSE06' functional, together with the Redhead equation, we obtained an estimated oxygen desorption peak at ca. 415 K, in much better agreement with the experimental TPD peak at 440 K. However, this calculation could still not explain the large broadening of the experimental TPD spectrum. An oxygen adsorption energy model was then formulated which took Ce coordination and superoxide ion coverage into account. With microkinetic simulations based in this energy model, we achieved a broad simulated TPD signal, which was largely in agreement with the experimental spectrum.Finally, an improved “supercharge” model was assessed concerning its ability to mimic the temperature-programmed reduction (TPR) experiments reported in the literature for H2 interacting with ceria nanoparticles. We proposed that the reduction process follows a Langmuir-Hinshelwood reaction mechanism, which gave a simulated TPR spectrum in good agreement with the experimental results.In summary, the goals listed above were achieved: we managed to simulate TPD and TPR spectra, using a DFT-based MK approach; the results were in good agreement with experiment and useful mechanistic insight about these processes and the OSC mechanism was derived from the MK simulations and the DFT analyses.
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- Imani, Roghayeh, et al.
(författare)
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Unravelling in-situ formation of highly active mixed metal oxide CuInO2 nanoparticles during CO2 electroreduction
- 2018
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Ingår i: Nano Energy. - : ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV. - 2211-2855 .- 2211-3282. ; 49, s. 40-50
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Technologies and catalysts for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) to immobile products are of high interest to minimize greenhouse effects. Copper(I) is a promising catalytic active state of copper but hampered by the inherent instability in comparison to copper(II) or copper(0). Here, we report a stabilization of the catalytic active state of copper(I) by the formation of a mixed metal oxide CuInO2 nanoparticle during the CO2 electroreduction. Our result shows the incorporation of nanoporous Sn:In2O3 interlayer to Cu2O pre-catalyst system lead to the formation of CuInO2 nanoparticles with remarkably higher activity for CO2 electroreduction at lower overpotential in comparison to the conventional Cu nanoparticles derived from sole Cu2O. Operando Raman spectroelectrochemistry is employed to in-situ monitor the process of nanoparticles formation during the electrocatalytic process. The experimental data are collaborated with DFT calculations to provide insight into the electro-formation of the type of Cu-based mixed metal oxide catalyst during the CO2 electroreduction, where a formation mechanism via copper ion diffusion across the substrate is suggested.
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- Kebede, Getachew, et al.
(författare)
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Fifty Shades of Water : Benchmarking DFT Functionals against Experimental Data for Ionic Crystalline Hydrates
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1549-9618 .- 1549-9626. ; 15:1, s. 584-594
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We propose that crystalline ionic hydrates constitute a valuable resource for benchmarking theoretical methods for aqueous ionic systems. Many such structures are known from the experimental literature, and they contain a large variety of water–water and ion–water structural motifs. Here we have collected a data set (CRYSTALWATER50) of 50 structurally unique "in-crystal" water molecules, involved in close to 100 nonequivalent O–H···O hydrogen bonds. A dozen well-known DFT functionals were benchmarked with respect to their ability to describe these experimental structures and their OH vibrational frequencies. We find that the PBE, RPBE-D3, and optPBE-vdW methods give the best H-bond distances and that anharmonic OH frequencies generated from B3LYP//optPBE-vdW energy scans outperform the other methods, i.e., here we performed B3LYP energy scans along the OH stretching coordinate while the rest of the structure was kept fixed at the optPBE-vdW-optimized positions.
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- Kebede, Getachew, et al.
(författare)
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Hydrogen-Bond Relations for Surface OH Species
- 2018
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Ingår i: The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. - Uppsala : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 1932-7447 .- 1932-7455. ; 122:9, s. 4849-4858
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Recension (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper concerns thin water films and their hydrogen-bond patterns on ionic surfaces. As far as we are aware, this is the first time H-bond correlations for surface water and hydroxide species are presented in the literature while hydrogen-bond relations in the solid state have been scrutinized for at least five decades. Our data set, which was derived using density functional theory, consists of 116 unique surface OH groups–intact water molecules as well as hydroxides–on MgO(001), CaO(001) and NaCl(001), covering the whole range from strong to weak to no H-bonds. The intact surface water molecules are found to always be redshifted with respect to the gas-phase water OH vibrational frequency, whereas the surface hydroxide groups are either redshifted (OsH) or blueshifted (OHf) compared to the gas-phase OH– frequency. The surface H-bond relations are compared with the traditional relations for bulk crystals. We find that the “ν(OH) vs R(H···O)” correlation curve for surface water does not coincide with the solid state curve: it is redshifted by about 200 cm–1 or more. The intact water molecules and hydroxide groups on the ionic surfaces essentially follow the same H-bond correlation curve.
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| 7. |
- Kebede, Getachew, et al.
(författare)
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OH
- 2017
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 8. |
- Kebede, Getachew, et al.
(författare)
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Red-shifting and blue-shifting OH groups on metal oxide surfaces : towards a unified picture
- 2018
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Ingår i: Physical Chemistry, Chemical Physics - PCCP. - 1463-9076 .- 1463-9084. ; 20:18, s. 12678-12687
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We analyse the OH vibrational signatures of water molecules and hydroxide ions on thin water films on MgO(001) and CaO(001), using DFT-generated anharmonic potential energy surfaces. We find that the OH stretching frequencies of intact water molecules on the surface are always downshifted with respect to the gas-phase species while the OH– groups are either upshifted or downshifted. Despite these differences, the main characteristics of the frequency shifts for all three types of surface OH groups (OHw, OsH and OHf) can be accounted for by one unified expression involving the in situ electric field from the surrounding environment, and the molecular properties of the vibrating species (H2O or OH–). The origin behind the different red- and blueshift behaviour can be traced back to the fact that the molecular dipole moment of a gas-phase water molecule increases when an OH bond is stretched, but the opposite is true for the hydroxide ion. We propose that familiarity with the relations presented here will help surface scientists in the interpretation of vibrational OH spectra for thin water films on ionic crystal surfaces.
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| 9. |
- Krishna, Akshay A. K., et al.
(författare)
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CCS : A software framework to generate two-body potentials using Curvature Constrained Splines
- 2021
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Ingår i: Computer Physics Communications. - : Elsevier BV. - 0010-4655 .- 1879-2944. ; 258
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We have developed an automated and efficient scheme for the fitting of data using Curvature Constrained Splines (CCS), to construct accurate two-body potentials. The approach enabled the construction of an oscillation-free, yet flexible, potential. We show that the optimization problem is convex and that it can be reduced to a standard Quadratic Programming (QP) problem. The improvements are demonstrated by the development of a two-body potential for Ne from ab initio data. We also outline possible extensions to the method.Program summaryProgram Title: CCSCPC Library link to program files: http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/7dt5nzxgbs.1Developer’s repository link: http://github.com/aksam432/CCSLicensing provisions: GPLv3Programming language: PythonExternal routines/libraries: NumPy, matplotlib, ASE, CVXOPTNature of problem: Ab initio quantum chemistry methods are often computationally very expensive. To alleviate this problem, the development of efficient empirical and semi-empirical methods is necessary. Two-body potentials are ubiquitous in empirical and semi-empirical methods.Solution method: The CCS package provides a new strategy to obtain accurate two body potentials. The potentials are described as cubic splines with curvature constraints.
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