| 1. |
- Jain, Titoo, et al.
(author)
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Additional Article Notification: Anisotropic growth of gold nanoparticles using cationic gemini surfactants: effects of structure variations in head and tail groups
- 2014
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In: Journal of Materials Chemistry C. - 2050-7534 .- 2050-7526. ; 2:17, s. 3476-3485
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A library of gemini surfactants is employed to study surfactant directed anisotropic growth of gold nanoparticles. The surfactants are modified with respect to the length and type of the tails, as well as of the spacer group. By analyzing the structure of the anisotropic nanoparticles, it is possible to extract information on how the structure of the surfactants influences the anisotropic gold nanocrystal growth. We find that the tail length of the surfactants has a greater influence on the resulting nanoparticle aspect ratio compared to the chemical nature of the spacer group. While clear trends between the aspect ratio and the tail as well as spacer length remain elusive, we observe that surfactants with a critical micelle concentration of similar to 1 mM produce particles with the highest aspect ratio. A crystallographic analysis of nanorods obtained using gemini surfactants reveals that they grow along 100 and are bound by {310} facets. This observation, which is specific for gemini surfactants, is explained by taking into account the preferential alignment of gemini surfactants with surface steps as suggested by electronic structure calculations.
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| 2. |
- Jain, T., et al.
(author)
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Anisotropic growth of gold nanoparticles using cationic gemini surfactants: effects of structure variations in head and tail groups
- 2014
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In: Journal of Materials Chemistry C. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 2050-7526 .- 2050-7534. ; 2:6, s. 994-1003
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A library of gemini surfactants is employed to study surfactant directed anisotropic growth of gold nanoparticles. The surfactants are modified with respect to the length and type of the tails, as well as of the spacer group. By analyzing the structure of the anisotropic nanoparticles, it is possible to extract information on how the structure of the surfactants influences the anisotropic gold nanocrystal growth. We find that the tail length of the surfactants has a greater influence on the resulting nanoparticle aspect ratio compared to the chemical nature of the spacer group. While clear trends between the aspect ratio and the tail as well as spacer length remain elusive, we observe that surfactants with a critical micelle concentration of similar to 1 mM produce particles with the highest aspect ratio. A crystallographic analysis of nanorods obtained using gemini surfactants reveals that they grow along and are bound by {310} facets. This observation, which is specific for gemini surfactants, is explained by taking into account the preferential alignment of gemini surfactants with surface steps as suggested by electronic structure calculations.
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| 3. |
- Erhart, Paul, 1978
(author)
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A first-principles study of helium storage in oxides and at oxide-iron interfaces
- 2012
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In: Journal of Applied Physics. - : AIP Publishing. - 0021-8979 .- 1089-7550. ; 111:11
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Density-functional theory calculations based on conventional as well as hybrid exchange-correlation functionals have been carried out to study the properties of helium in various oxides (Al2O3, TiO2, Y2O3, YAP, YAG, YAM, MgO, CaO, BaO, SrO) as well as at oxide-iron interfaces. Helium interstitials in bulk oxides are shown to be energetically more favorable than substitutional helium, yet helium binds to existing vacancies. The solubility of He in oxides is systematically higher than in iron and scales with the free volume at the interstitial site nearly independently of the chemical composition of the oxide. In most oxides, He migration is significantly slower and He-He binding is much weaker than in iron. To quantify the solubility of helium at oxide-iron interfaces two prototypical systems are considered (Fe-MgO, Fe-FeO-MgO). In both cases, the He solubility is markedly enhanced in the interface compared to either of the bulk phases. The results of the calculations allow to construct a schematic energy landscape for He interstitials in iron. The implications of these results are discussed in the context of helium sequestration in oxide dispersion strengthened steels, including the effects of interfaces and lattice strain.
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| 4. |
- Erhart, Paul, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Efficacy of the DFT plus U formalism for modeling hole polarons in perovskite oxides
- 2014
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In: Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - 2469-9950 .- 2469-9969. ; 90:3, s. 035204-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We investigate the formation of self-trapped holes (STH) in three prototypical perovskites (SrTiO3, BaTiO3, PbTiO3) using a combination of density functional theory (DFT) calculations with local potentials and hybrid functionals. First we construct a local correction potential for polaronic configurations in SrTiO3 that is applied via the DFT + U method and matches the forces from hybrid calculations. We then use the DFT + U potential to search the configuration space and locate the lowest energy STH configuration. It is demonstrated that both the DFT + U potential and the hybrid functional yield a piecewise linear dependence of the total energy on the occupation of the STH level, suggesting that self-interaction effects have been properly removed. The DFT + U model is found to be transferable to BaTiO3 and PbTiO3, and STH formation energies from DFT + U and hybrid calculations are in close agreement for all three materials. STH formation is found to be energetically favorable in SrTiO3 and BaTiO3 but not in PbTiO3, which can be rationalized by considering the alignment of the valence band edges on an absolute energy scale. In the case of PbTiO3 the strong coupling between Pb 6s and O 2p states lifts the valence band minimum (VBM) compared to SrTiO3 and BaTiO3. This reduces the separation between VBM and STH level and renders the STH configuration metastable with respect to delocalization (band hole state). We expect that the present approach can be adapted to study STH formation also in oxides with different crystal structures and chemical compositions.
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| 5. |
- Erhart, Paul, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Formation and switching of defect dipoles in acceptor-doped lead titanate: A kinetic model based on first-principles calculations
- 2013
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In: Physical Review B. - 1098-0121. ; 88:2, s. artikel nr 024107-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The formation and field-induced switching of defect dipoles in acceptor doped lead titanate is described by a kinetic model representing an extension of the well established Arlt-Neumann model [Ferroelectrics 76, 303 (1987)]. Energy barriers for defect association and reorientation of oxygen vacancy-dopant (Cu and Fe) complexes are obtained from first-principles calculations and serve as input for kinetic coefficients of the rate equation model. The numerical solution of the model describes the time evolution of the oxygen vacancy distribution at different temperatures and dopant concentrations in the presence or absence of an alternating external field. We predict the characteristic time scale for the alignment of all defect dipoles with the spontaneous polarization of the surrounding matrix. In this state the defect dipoles act as obstacles for domain wall motion and contribute to the experimentally observed aging. Under cycling conditions the fully aligned configuration is perturbed and a dynamic equilibrium is established with defect dipoles in parallel and antiparallel orientation relative to the spontaneous polarization. This process can be related to the deaging behavior of piezoelectric ceramics.
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| 6. |
- Erhart, Paul, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Low-Temperature Criticality of Martensitic Transformations of Cu Nanoprecipitates in alpha-Fe
- 2013
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In: Physical Review Letters. - 1079-7114 .- 0031-9007. ; 111:2, s. 025701-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nanoprecipitates form during nucleation of multiphase equilibria in phase segregating multicomponent systems. In spite of their ubiquity, their size-dependent physical chemistry, in particular, at the boundary between phases with incompatible topologies, is still rather arcane. Here, we use extensive atomistic simulations to map out the size-temperature phase diagram of Cu nanoprecipitates in alpha-Fe. The growing precipitates undergo martensitic transformations from the body-centered cubic (bcc) phase to multiply twinned 9R structures. At high temperatures, the transitions exhibit strong first-order character and prominent hysteresis. Upon cooling, the discontinuities become less pronounced and the transitions occur at ever smaller cluster sizes. Below 300 K, the hysteresis vanishes while the transition remains discontinuous with a finite but diminishing latent heat. This unusual size-temperature phase diagram results from the entropy generated by the soft modes of the bcc-Cu phase, which are stabilized through confinement by the alpha-Fe lattice.
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| 7. |
- Erhart, Paul, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Quasiparticle spectra, absorption spectra, and excitonic properties of NaI and SrI2 from many-body perturbation theory
- 2014
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In: Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - 2469-9950 .- 2469-9969. ; 89:7, s. art no 075132 -
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We investigate the basic quantum-mechanical processes behind the nonproportional response of scintillators to incident radiation responsible for reduced resolution. For this purpose, we conduct a comparative first-principles study of quasiparticle spectra on the basis of the G(0)W(0) approximation as well as absorption spectra and excitonic properties by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation for two important systems, NaI and SrI2. The former is a standard scintillator material with well-documented nonproportionality, while the latter has recently been found to exhibit a very proportional response. We predict band gaps for NaI and SrI2 of 5.5 and 5.2 eV, respectively, in good agreement with experiment. Furthermore, we obtain binding energies for the ground state excitons of 216 meV for NaI and 195 +/- 25 meV for SrI2. We analyze the degree of exciton anisotropy and spatial extent by means of a coarse-grained electron-hole pair-correlation function. Thereby, it is shown that the excitons in NaI differ strongly from those in SrI2 in terms of structure and symmetry, even if their binding energies are similar. Furthermore, we show that quite unexpectedly the spatial extents of the highly-anisotropic low-energy excitons in SrI2 in fact exceed those in NaI by a factor of two to three in terms of the full width at half maxima of the electron-hole pair-correlation function.
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| 8. |
- Erhart, Paul, 1978, et al.
(author)
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Thermodynamic and mechanical properties of copper precipitates in alpha-iron from atomistic simulations
- 2013
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In: Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics. - 2469-9950 .- 2469-9969. ; 88:2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Precipitate hardening is commonly used in materials science to control strength by acting on the number density, size distribution, and shape of solute precipitates in the hardened matrix. The Fe-Cu system has attracted much attention over the last several decades due to its technological importance as a model alloy for Cu steels. In spite of these efforts several aspects of its phase diagram remain unexplained. Here we use atomistic simulations to characterize the polymorphic phase diagram of Cu precipitates in body-centered cubic (BCC) Fe and establish a consistent link between their thermodynamic and mechanical properties in terms of thermal stability, shape, and strength. The size at which Cu precipitates transform from BCC to a close-packed 9R structure is found to be strongly temperature dependent, ranging from approximately 4 nm in diameter (similar to 2700 atoms) at 200 K to about 8 nm (similar to 22 800 atoms) at 700 K. These numbers are in very good agreement with the interpretation of experimental data given Monzen et al. [Philos. Mag. A 80, 711 (2000)]. The strong temperature dependence originates from the entropic stabilization of BCC Cu, which is mechanically unstable as a bulk phase. While at high temperatures the transition exhibits first-order characteristics, the hysteresis, and thus the nucleation barrier, vanish at temperatures below approximately 300 K. This behavior is explained in terms of the mutual cancellation of the energy differences between core and shell (wetting layer) regions of BCC and 9R nanoprecipitates, respectively. The proposed mechanism is not specific for the Fe-Cu system but could generally be observed in immiscible systems, whenever the minority component is unstable in the lattice structure of the host matrix. Finally, we also study the interaction of precipitates with screw dislocations as a function of both structure and orientation. The results provide a coherent picture of precipitate strength that unifies previous calculations and experimental observations.
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| 9. |
- Genenko, Y.A., et al.
(author)
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Potential barrier at the ferroelectric grain boundary due to asymmetric screening of depolarization fields
- 2012
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In: Proceedings of 2012 21st IEEE Int. Symp. on Applications of Ferroelectrics held jointly with 11th IEEE European Conference on the Applications of Polar Dielectrics and IEEE PFM, ISAF/ECAPD/PFM 2012, Aveiro;9 July 2012 through 13 July 2012. - 1099-4734. - 9781467326681 ; :Article number 6297727, s. 1-4
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Electric depolarization fields generated by a stripe domain structure in ferroelectrics are considered within a semiconductor model. Field screening due to electronic band bending and due to presence of intrinsic defects leads to the building of asymmetric space charge regions near the grain boundary. This in turn results in the formation of a potential barrier between the grain surface and its interior.
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| 10. |
- Genenko, Y.A., et al.
(author)
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Surface potential at a ferroelectric grain due to asymmetric screening of depolarization fields
- 2014
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In: Journal of Applied Physics. - : AIP Publishing. - 0021-8979 .- 1089-7550. ; 115:10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nonlinear screening of electric depolarization fields, generated by a stripe domain structure in a ferroelectric grain of a polycrystalline material, is studied within a semiconductor model of ferroelectrics. It is shown that the maximum strength of local depolarization fields is rather determined by the electronic band gap than by the spontaneous polarization magnitude. Furthermore, field screening due to electronic band bending and due to presence of intrinsic defects leads to asymmetric space charge regions near the grain boundary, which produce an effective dipole layer at the surface of the grain. This results in the formation of a potential difference between the grain surface and its interior of the order of 1V, which can be of either sign depending on defect transition levels and concentrations. Exemplary acceptor doping of BaTiO3 is shown to allow tuning of the said surface potential in the region between 0.1 and 1.3V. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.
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