0000000000280628
AUTHOR
Núria López
First-principles calculations of the atomic and electronic structure ofFcenters in the bulk and on the (001) surface ofSrTiO3
The atomic and electronic structure, formation energy, and the energy barriers for migration have been calculated for the neutral O vacancy point defect F center in cubic SrTiO3 employing various implementations of density functional theory DFT. Both bulk and TiO2-terminated 001 surface F centers have been considered. Supercells of different shapes containing up to 320 atoms have been employed. The limit of an isolated single oxygen vacancy in the bulk corresponds to a 270-atom supercell, in contrast to commonly used supercells containing 40– 80 atoms. Calculations carried out with the hybrid B3PW functional show that the F center level approaches the conduction band bottom to within 0.5 eV…
Adsorbate-Induced Oxygen Vacancy Mobility in Ultrathin Oxide Films
Oxides at the nanometric scale show a behavior markedly different from that of their bulk counterparts. Ultrathin oxides grown on metals do not reach the full insulator regime, and they cannot decouple the electronic clouds of incoming adsorbates from that of the metal substrate. Although oxygen vacancies control the chemical and physical properties of ultrathin oxide films, the role of intrinsic defects has been overlooked so far. By means of density functional theory methods, we show that the addition of atoms with high electron affinity, such as Au, to ultrathin MgO grown either on a Ag or Mo support, completely reverses the preferential positions of oxygen vacancies, decreases their res…
A Density Functional Theory study on gold cyanide interactions: The fundamentals of ore cleaning
We have employed Density Functional Theory calculations to study the adsorption of CN, CN− and KCN on Au(111) and Au(211) surfaces and compare the obtained results to CO. The adsorption of CN, CN−, and KCN are exothermic with respect to the gas-phase moieties, and the adsorption energy increases at steps. Our results show that the binding mechanism of CN− is different from that of CO. The projected LDOS indicates that the bond between the flat surface and CN shows very small overlap between metal and CN states. This overlap increases provided that extra charge is present or low-coordinated Au atoms are available. Charge transfer is analyzed via the Bader method and the Electron Localization…
First principles simulations of F centers in cubic SrTiO 3
Atomic and electronic structure of regular and O-deficient SrTiO3 have been studied. Several types of first principles atomistic simulations: Hartree-Fock method, Density Functional Theory, and hybrid HF-DFT functionals, have been applied to periodic models that consider supercells of different sizes (ranging between 40 and 240 atoms). We confirm the ionic character of the Sr-O bonds and the high covalency of the Ti-O2 substructure. For the stoichiometric cubic crystal; the lattice constant and bulk modulus correctly reproduce the experimental data whereas the band gap is only properly obtained by the B3PW functional. The relaxed geometry around the F center shows a large expansion of the t…