The size-dependent structures and optical properties of CdSeS nanoclusters in water medium are investigated. The stability of different size-dependent Cd$_n$Se$_m$S$_p$ nanoclusters (up to n=6) is studied using density functional theory/time-dependent density functional theory (DFT/TDDFT). The computed results for ground (S$_0$) and excited (S$_1$, S$_2$, S$_3$) states are experimentally verified through UV-Vis spectroscopy. Computed ab initio results suggest that CdSeS clusters are significantly more hyperpolarizable compared to CdX (X= S, Se, Te) clusters. Structure dependent response properties are also observed, especially for n>3. Larger hyperpolarizabilities ($β$ and$γ$), charge variation and orbital analysis establish Cd$_4$Se$_m$S$_p$ clusters, as nonlinear optically active quantum dots (QDs).
We studied the rate of spontaneous emission from colloidal CdSe and CdTe nanocrystals at room temperature. The decay rate, obtained from luminescence decay curves, increases with the emission frequency in a supra-linear way. This dependence is explained by the thermal occupation of dark exciton states at room temperature, giving rise to a strong attenuation of the rate of emission. The supra-linear dependence is in agreement with the results of tight-binding calculations.
We calculate the optical properties of a series of passivated non-stoichiometric CdSe clusters using two first-principles approaches: time-dependent density functional theory within the local density approximation, and by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation for optical excitations with the GW approximation for the self-energy. We analyze the character of optical excitations leading to the first low-energy peak in the absorption cross-section of these clusters. Within time-dependent density functional theory, we find that the lowest-energy excitation is mostly a single-level to single-level tra…
Thin films prepared of semiconductor nanoparticles are promising for low-cost electronic applications such as transistors and solar cells. One hurdle for their breakthrough is their notoriously low conductivity. To address this, we precisely decorate CdSe nanoparticles with platinum domains of one to three nanometers in diameter by a facile and robust seeded growth method. We demonstrate the transition from semiconductor to metal dominated conduction in monolayered films. By adjusting the platinum content in such solution-processable hybrid, oligomeric nanoparticles the dark currents through d…
The size-dependent structure of CdSe nanoparticles, with diameters ranging from 2 to 4 nm, has been studied using the atomic pair distribution function (PDF) method. The core structure of the measured CdSe nanoparticles can be described in terms of the wurtzite atomic structure with extensive stacking faults. The density of faults in the nanoparticles ~50% . The diameter of the core region was extracted directly from the PDF data and is in good agreement with the diameter obtained from standard characterization methods suggesting that there is little surface amorphous region. A compressive str…
We present first-principles calculations on bulk CdSe and CdSe nanowires with diameters of up to 22 Å. Density functional linear combination of atomic orbitals and plane wave calculations of the electronic and structural properties are presented and discussed. We use an iterative, symmetry-based method to relax the structures into the ground state. We find that the band gap depends on surface termination. Vibrational properties in the whole Brillouin zone of bulk CdSe and the zone-center vibrations of nanowires are calculated and analyzed. We find strongly size-dependent and nearly constant mo…
We report the effects of variation in length on the electronic structure of CdSe nanorods derived from atomic clusters and passivated by fictitious hydrogen atoms. These nanorods are augmented by attaching gold clusters at both the ends to form a nanodumbbell. The goal is to assess the changes at nanolevel after formation of contacts with gold clusters serving as electrodes and compare the results with experimental observations [PRL, 95, 056805 (2005)]. Calculations involving nanorods of length 4.6 Angstrom to 116.6 Angstrom are performed using density functional theory implemented within plan…
Semiconducting nanoparticles are the building blocks of optical nanodevices as their electronic states, and therefore light absorption and emission, can be controlled by modifying their size and shape. CdSe is perhaps the most studied of these nanoparticles, due to the efficiency of its synthesis, the high quality of the resulting samples, and the fact that the optical gap is in the visible range. In this article, we study light absorption of CdSe nanostructures with sizes up to 1.5 nm within density functional theory. We study both bulk fragments with wurtzite symmetry and novel fullerene-lik…
In this article, we present our results on bilayers assembled upon strategic placement of Cd$_6$Se$_6$ clusters. These bilayers are studied for their stability and electronic structure with the help of density functional theory and are further analyzed using Bardeen, Tersoff and Hamann formalism for their tunneling properties. Our calculations show that the hexagonal arrangement of these clusters prevails as the most stable geometry showing all real phonon modes. First-principles molecular dynamics studies on this 2D structure show that it remains intact even at room temperature. This bilayer …
The multiplication rates of hot carriers in CdSe quantum dots are quantified using an atomistic pseudopotential approach and first order perturbation theory. Both excited holes and electrons are considered, and electron-hole Coulomb interactions are accounted for. We find that holes have much higher multiplication rates than electrons with the same excess energy due to the larger density of final states (positive trions). When electron-hole pairs are generated by photon absorption, however, the net carrier multiplication rate is dominated by photogenerated electrons, because they have on avera…
The mechanical properties of Cadmium Selenide (CdSe) nanowire is an emerging issue due to its application in semiconductor and optoelectronics industries. In this paper, we conducted molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the temperature-dependent mechanical properties and failure behavior of Zinc-Blende (ZB) CdSe nanowire under uniaxial tensile deformation. We employed Stillinger-Weber (SW) potential to describe the inter-atomic interactions. The effect of variation of temperatures (100 K-600 K), sizes, and crystal orientation on the tensile response of the CdSe nanowires is inves…
Ultrathin two-dimensional nanosheets raise a rapidly increasing interest due to their unique dimensionality-dependent properties. Most of the two-dimensional materials are obtained by exfoliation of layered bulk materials or are grown on substrates by vapor deposition methods. To produce free-standing nanosheets, solution-based colloidal methods are emerging as promising routes. In this work, we demonstrate ultrathin CdSe nanosheets with controllable size, shape and phase. The key of our approach is the use of halogenated alkanes as additives in a hot-injection synthesis. Increasing concentrat…
Optical and X-ray Photo-emission Spectroscopies of Core/Shell Colloidal CdSe/CdS Quantum Dots: Modeling and Experimental Determination of Band Alignment
We present a combined experimental and theoretical approach for the determination of the low-temperature valence band offset (VBO) at CdSe/ZnTe heterojunctions with underlying zincblende crystal structure. On the experimental side, the optical transition of the type II interface allows for a precise measurement of the type II band gap. We show how the excitation-power dependent shift of this photoluminescence (PL) signal can be used for any type II system for a precise determination of the VBO. On the theoretical side, we use a refined empirical tight-binding parametrization in order to accura…
We present an approach to calculate total energies of nanoclusters based on first principles estimates. For very large clusters the total energy can be separated into surface, edge and corner energies, in addition to bulk contributions. Using this separation and estimating these with direct, first principles calculations, together with the relevant chemical potentials, we have calculated the total energies of Cu and CdSe tetrahedrons containing a large number of atoms. In our work we consider polyhedral clusters so that in addition our work provides direct information on relaxation. For Cu the…
The kinetics and thermodynamics of structural transformations under pressure depend strongly on particle size due to the influence of surface free energy. By suitable design of surface structure, composition, and passivation it is possible, in principle, to prepare nanocrystals in structures inaccessible to bulk materials. However, few realizations of such extreme size-dependent behavior exist. Here we show with molecular dynamics computer simulation that in a model of CdSe/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals the core high pressure structure can be made metastable under ambient conditions by tuning th…
Inverted type-I heterostructure core/crown quantum rings (QRs) are quantum-efficient luminophores, whose spectral characteristics are highly tunable. Here, we study the optoelectronic properties of type-I core/crown CdS/CdSe QRs in the zincblende phase - over contrasting lateral size and crown width. For this we inspect their strain profiles, transition energies, transition matrix elements, spatial charge densities, electronic bandstructure, band-mixing probabilities, optical gain spectra, maximum optical gains and differential optical gains. Our framework uses an effective-mass envelope funct…
A first-principles study of small CdnSen Quantum Dots (QD) ('n' =6, 12, 13, and 33) has been performed for application to QD solar cell development. We separately assess the effects of the particle size and the passivating ligands upon the optimized structure and the energy gap (from a density functional theory (DFT) calculation) and the corresponding absorption spectrum (from a time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) calculation). The structures of four thiol ligands, namely - cysteine (Cys), mercaptopropionic acid (MPA), and their reduced-chain analogues, are investigated. We have d…
Material properties depend sensitively on the atomic arrangements and atomic bonding, but these are notoriously difficult to measure in nanosized atomic clusters due to the small size of the objects and the challenge of obtaining bulk samples of identical clusters. Here we have combined the recent ability to make gram quantities of identical semiconductor quantum-dot nanoparticles with the ability to measure lattice dynamics on small sample quantities of hydrogenated materials using high energy resolution inelastic x-ray scattering (HERIX), to measure the size-dependence of the phonon density …
Photoluminescence of a single CdSe quantum dot embedded in a ZnSe nanowire has been investigated. It has been found that the dark exciton has a strong influence on the optical properties. The most visible influence is the strongly reduced excitonic emission compared to the biexcitonic one. Temperature dependent lifetime measurements have allowed us to measure a large splitting of $ΔE = 6 $ meV between the dark and the bright exciton as well as the spin flip rates between these two states.
We calculate the excitation energies of small neutral sodium clusters in the framework of time-dependent density-functional theory. In the presented calculations, we extract these energies from the power spectra of the dipole and quadrupole signals that result from a real-time and real-space propagation. For comparison with measured photoelectron spectra, we use the ionic configurations of the corresponding single-charged anions. Our calculations clearly improve on earlier results for photoelectron spectra obtained from static Kohn-Sham eigenvalues.
A highly efficient semi-empirical Hamiltonian has been developed and applied to model the compact boron clusters with the intermediate size. The Hamiltonian, in addition to the inclusion of the environment-dependent interactions and electron-electron correlations with the on-site charge calculated self-consistently, has contained the environment-dependent excitation orbital energy to take into account the atomic aggregation effect on the atomic orbitals. The Hamiltonian for boron has successfully characterized the electron deficiency of boron and captured the complex chemical bonding in variou…
We present a time-dependent formulation of coupled cluster theory. This theory allows for direct computation of the free energy of quantum systems at finite temperature by imaginary time integration and is closely related to the thermal cluster cumulant theory of Mukherjee and co-workers. Our derivation highlights the connection to perturbation theory and zero-temperature coupled cluster theory. We show explicitly how the finite-temperature coupled cluster singles and doubles amplitude equations can be derived in analogy with the zero-temperature theory and how response properties can be effic…
The detailed atomistic modeling of electrochemically deposited metal monolayers is challenging due to the complex structure of the metal-solution interface and the critical effects of surface elec- trification during electrode polarization. Accurate models of interfacial electrochemical equilibria are further challenged by the need to include entropic effects to obtain accurate surface chemical potentials. We present an embedded quantum-continuum model of the interfacial environment that addresses each of these challenges and study the underpotential deposition of silver on the gold (100) surf…
Ab initio metadynamics enables extracting free-energy landscapes having the accuracy of first principles electronic structure methods. We introduce an interface between the PLUMED code that computes free-energy landscapes and enhanced-sampling algorithms and the ASE module, which includes several ab initio electronic structure codes. The interface is validated with a Lennard-Jones cluster free-energy landscape calculation by averaging multiple short metadynamics trajectories. We use this interface and analysis to estimate the free-energy landscape of Ag5 and Ag6 clusters at 10, 100 and 300 K w…
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster（明斯特大学）；University of Cambridge（剑桥大学）
Applications of active particles require a method for controlling their dynamics. While this is typically achieved via direct interventions, indirect interventions based, e.g., on an orientation-dependent self-propulsion speed of the particles, become increasingly popular. In this work, we investigate systems of interacting active Brownian spheres in two spatial dimensions with orientation-dependent propulsion using analytical modeling and Brownian dynamics simulations. It is found that the orientation-dependence leads to self-advection, circulating currents, and programmable cluster shapes.
We present results of kinetic lattice Monte Carlo (KLMC) simulations of substitutional arsenic diffusion in silicon mediated by lattice vacancies. Large systems are considered, with 1000 dopant atoms and long range \textit{ab initio} interactions, to the 18th nearest lattice neighbor, and the diffusivity of each defect species over time is calculated. The concentration of vacancies is greater than equilibrium concentrations in order to simulate conditions shortly after ion implantation. A previously unreported time dependence in the applicability of the pair diffusion model, even at low temper…
University of Porto（波尔图大学）；Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学）
This paper proposes a novel Adaptive Clustering-based Reduced-Order Modeling (ACROM) framework to significantly improve and extend the recent family of clustering-based reduced-order models (CROMs). This adaptive framework enables the clustering-based domain decomposition to evolve dynamically throughout the problem solution, ensuring optimum refinement in regions where the relevant fields present steeper gradients. It offers a new route to fast and accurate material modeling of history-dependent nonlinear problems involving highly localized plasticity and damage phenomena. The overall approac…
Electronic circular dichroism (ECD) is a powerful spectroscopical method for investigating chiral properties at the molecular level. ECD calculations with the commonly used linear-response time-dependent density functional theory (LR-TDDFT) framework can be prohibitively costly for large systems. To alleviate this problem, we present here an ECD implementation for the projector augmented-wave method in the real-time-propagation TDDFT (RT-TDDFT) framework in the open-source GPAW code. Our implementation supports both local atomic basis set and real-space finite-difference representations of wav…
