Interactions between molecules and electrode surfaces play a key role in electrochemical processes and are a subject of extensive research, both experimental and theoretical. In this manuscript, we address the water dissociation reaction on a Pd(111) electrode surface, modelled as a slab embedded in an external electric field. We aim at unraveling the relationship between surface charge and zero-point-energy in aiding or hindering this reaction. We calculate energy barriers with dispersion-corrected density-functional theory and an efficient parallel implementation of the nudged-elastic-band method. We show that the lowest dissociation barrier, and consequently highest reaction rate, takes place when the field reaches a strength where two different geometries of the water molecule in the reactant state are equally stable. Zero-point energy contributions to this reaction, on the other hand, remain nearly constant across a wide range of electric field strengths, despite significant changes in the reactant state. Interestingly, we show that the application of electric fields that induce a negative charge on the surface can make nuclear tunneling more significant for these reactions.
Water absorption and dissociation processes on pristine low-index TiO$_2$ interfaces are important but poorly understood outside the well-studied anatase (101) and rutile (110). To understand these, we construct three sets of machine learning potentials that are simultaneously applicable to various TiO$_2$ surfaces, based on three density-functional-theory approximations. We compute the water dissociation free energies on seven pristine TiO$_2$ surfaces, and predict that anatase (100), anatase (110), rutile (001), and rutile (011) surfaces favor water dissociation, anatase (101) and rutile (10…
In order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of both thermodynamics and kinetics of water dissociation on TiO2, the reactions between liquid water and perfect and defective rutile TiO2 (110) surfaces were investigated using ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. The results showed that the free-energy barrier (~ 4.4 kcal/mol) is too high for a spontaneous dissociation of water on the perfect rutile (110) surface at a low temperature. The most stable oxygen vacancy (Vo1) on the rutile (110) surface cannot promote the dissociation of water, while other unstable oxygen vacancies can signif…
Adsorption and dissociation of hydrocarbons on metallic surfaces represent crucial steps to carburization of metal. Here, we use density functional theory total energy calculations with the climbing-image nudged elastic band method to estimate the adsorption energies and dissociation barriers for different CO coverages with surface supercells of different sizes. For the absorption of CO, the contribution from van der Waals interaction in the computation of adsorption parameters is found important in small systems with high CO-coverages. The dissociation process involves carbon insertion into t…
Water dissociation is a rate limiting step in many industrially important chemical reactions. In this investigation, climbing image nudged elastic band (CINEB) method, within the framework of density functional theory, is used to report the activation energies (E a ) of water dissociation on Cu(111) surface with a vacancy. Introduction of vacancy results in a reduced coordination of the dissociated products, which facilitates their availability for reactions that involve water dissociation as an intermediate step. Activation energy for dissociation of water reduces by nearly 0.2 eV on Cu(111) …
The interaction of water with $α$-alumina (i.e. $α$-Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$ surfaces is important in a variety of applications and a useful model for the interaction of water with environmentally abundant aluminosilicate phases. Despite its significance, studies of water interaction with $α$-Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$ surfaces other than the $(0001)$ are extremely limited. Here we characterize the interaction of water (D$_{2}$O) with a well defined $α$-Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$$(1\bar{1}02)$ surface in UHV both experimentally, using temperature programmed desorption and surface-specific vibrational spectroscopy, and theor…
Accurate prediction of the water properties from a low-cost ab-initio method still a foremost problem for chemists and physicist. Though density functional approaches starting from semilocal to hybrid functionals are tested, those are not efficiently performed for all the properties together, especially, considering energies, conformal ranking, structural and dynamics of water. Also, the inclusion of the long-range van der Waals (vdW) interaction does not improve the ordering stability of isomer. However, relying on the simple revision of the Tao-Mo (revTM) semilocal meta-generalized gradient …
Evidence of Photocatalytic Dissociation of Water on TiO2 with Atomic Resolution
TiO 2表面的光催化分解水反应是氢能技术中具有重要意义的基础问题之一，并得到了广泛的研究。然而，存在的第一个反应步骤，直接光解水，已被忽视。在这里，我们提供了明确的实验证据表明，吸附在金红石型TiO 2（110）-1 \times 1表面的水分子可以解离紫外线照射下，使用低温扫描隧道显微镜。结果表明，在光催化作用下，Ti（Ti_（5c））五配位上的一个水分子发生解离，在Ti_（5c）上生成一个羟基，在桥氧排上生成另一个羟基。我们的研究结果揭示了光催化水裂解反应链中缺失的一环，这大大有助于详细了解潜在的机制。
Strong electric fields can accelerate molecular dissociation reactions. The phenomenon known as the Wien effect was previously observed using high-voltage electrolysis cells that produced fields of about 10^7 V m-1, sufficient to accelerate the dissociation of weakly bound molecules (e.g., organics and weak electrolytes). The observation of the Wien effect for the common case of water dissociation (H2O = H+ + OH-) has remained elusive. Here we study the dissociation of interfacial water adjacent to proton-permeable graphene electrodes and observe strong acceleration of the reaction in fields r…
In this paper, we present a method to generate state-resolved reaction cross sections in analytical form for rovibrational energy excitation and dissociation of a molecular gas. The method is applied to an ab initio database for the N2-N system devel- oped at NASA Ames Research Center. The detailed information on N2 +N collisions contained in this database has been reduced by adapting a Uniform RoVibrational- Collisional bin model originally developed for rate coefficients. Using a 10-bin system as an example, a comparison is made between two sets of coarse-grain cross sections, obtained by an…
Recent experiments demonstrated that interfacial water dissociation (H2O = H+ + OH-) could be accelerated exponentially by an electric field applied to graphene electrodes, a phenomenon related to the Wien effect. Here we report an order-of-magnitude acceleration of the interfacial water dissociation reaction under visible-light illumination. This process is accompanied by spatial separation of protons and hydroxide ions across one-atom-thick graphene and enhanced by strong interfacial electric fields. The found photo-effect is attributed to the combination of graphene's perfect selectivity wi…
In this article, we propose a generalized model for nonequilibrium vibrational energy distribution functions. The model can be used, in place of equilibrium (Boltzmann) distribution functions, when deriving reaction rate constants for high-temperature nonequilibrium flows. The distribution model is derived based on recent \textit{ab initio} calculations, carried out using potential energy surfaces developed using accurate computational quantum chemistry techniques for the purpose of studying air chemistry at high temperatures. Immediately behind a strong shock wave, the vibrational energy dist…
The hydrogen-bond network of water is characterized by the presence of coordination defects relative to the ideal tetrahedral network of ice, whose fluctuations determine the static and time-dependent properties of the liquid. Because of topological constraints, such defects do not come alone, but are highly correlated coming in a plethora of different pairs. Here we discuss in detail such correlations in the case of ab initio water models and show that they have interesting similarities to regular and defective solid phases of water. Although defect correlations involve deviations from ideali…
We discuss how to include our recently proposed thermopotentiostat technique [Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 136803 (2021)] into any existing ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) package. Using thermopotentiostat AIMD simulations in the canonical NVTΦ ensemble at constant electrode potential, we compute the polarization bound charge and dielectric response of interfacial water from first principles.
For the first time, an ab initio molecular dynamics simulation was performed to describe the C$_3$S/water interface. The simulation shows that oxides with favorable environment are protonated at first, creating very stable hydroxide groups. Proton transfers occur between water and silicates, and between water and hydroxides formed upon water dissociation on the surface. The typical lifetime of these events is on the same timescale than interconversion between Eigen and Zundel ions in bulk water. At the very early stage of the hydration encompassed by our simulation, silanol groups are very uns…
We study ion pair dissociation in water at ambient conditions using a combination of classical and ab initio approaches. The goal of this study is to disentangle the sources of discrepancy observed in computed potentials of mean force. In particular we aim to understand why some models favor the stability of solvent-separated ion pairs versus contact ion pairs. We found that some observed differences can be explained by non-converged simulation parameters. However, we also unveil that for some models, small changes in the solution density can have significant effects on modifying the equilibri…
Water molecules adsorbed on inorganic substrates play an important role in several technological applications. In the presence of light atoms in adsorbates, nuclear quantum effects (NQE) influence properties of these systems. In this work, we explore the impact of NQE on the dissociation of water wires on stepped Pt(221) surfaces. By performing ab initio molecular dynamics simulations with van der Waals corrected density functional theory, we note that several competing minima for both intact and dissociated structures are accessible at finite temperatures, making it important to assess whethe…
Water is of the utmost importance for life and technology. However, a genuinely predictive ab initio model of water has eluded scientists. We demonstrate that a fully ab initio approach, relying on the strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) density functional, provides such a description of water. SCAN accurately describes the balance among covalent bonds, hydrogen bonds, and van der Waals interactions that dictates the structure and dynamics of liquid water. Notably, SCAN captures the density difference between water and ice I{\it h} at ambient conditions, as well as many import…
A detailed computational analysis has been performed, considering copper atomic contacts that are exposed directly to water molecules, hydroxyl groups, and monatomic as well as molecular hydrogen and oxygen species. The optimized physical bonding structure, electrical conductance and inelastic tunneling spectra (IETS) have been determined theoretically for moderately large structures by performing appropriate ab-initio and semi-empirical calculations. By considering the aforementioned properties, it has been possible to determine that some of the molecular bridging structures may be regarded a…
Microscopic Structure and Dynamics of Interfacial Water at Fluorinated vs Nonfluorinated Surfaces -- Insights from Ab-Initio Simulations and IR Spectroscopy
A recombination reaction model for high-temperature chemical kinetics is derived from ab initio simulations data. A kinetic recombination rate model is derived using a recently developed ab initio state-specific dissociation model and the principle of microscopic reversibility. When atoms recombine, the kinetic rate model shows that product molecules have high favoring for high vibrational energy states. A continuum recombination rate model is then derived analytically from the kinetic recombination rate model. Similarly, the expression for the average vibrational energy of recombining molecul…
In this work we devise a theoretical and computational method to compute the elastic scattering of electrons from a non-spherical potential, such as in the case of molecules and molecular aggregates. Its main feature is represented by the ability of calculating accurate wave functions for continuum states of polycentric systems via the solution of the Lippmann-Schwinger equation, including both the correlation effects and multi-scattering interference terms, typically neglected in widely used approaches, such as the Mott theory. Within this framework, we calculate the purely elastic scattering…
We perform ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulation of liquid water in the canonical ensemble at ambient conditions using the SCAN meta-GGA functional approximation, and carry out systematic comparisons with the results obtained from the GGA-level PBE functional, and Tkatchenko-Scheffler van der Waals (vdW) dispersion correction inclusive PBE functional. We analyze various properties of liquid water including radial distribution functions, oxygen-oxygen-oxygen triplet angular distribution, tetrahedrality, hydrogen bonds, diffusion coefficients, ring statistics, density of states, band ga…
Efficient "on-the-fly" calculation of Raman spectra from \textit{ab-initio} molecular dynamics: Application to hydrophobic/hydrophilic solutes in bulk water
We study NaCl ion-pair dissociation in a dilute aqueous solution using computer simulations both for the full system with long range Coulomb interactions and for a well chosen reference system with short range intermolecular interactions. Analyzing results using concepts from Local Molecular Field (LMF) theory and the recently proposed AI-based analysis tool "State predictive information bottleneck" (SPIB) we show that the system with short range interactions can accurately reproduce the transition rate for the dissociation process, the dynamics for moving between the underlying metastable sta…
In this article, we propose a generalized non-equilibrium chemical kinetics model from \textit{ab initio} simulation data obtained using accurate potential energy surfaces developed recently for the purpose of studying high-temperature air chemistry. First, we present a simple cross-section model for dissociation that captures recent \textit{ab initio} data accurately. The cross-section model is analytically integrated over Boltzmann distributions and general non-Boltzmann distributions to derive general non-equilibrium dissociation model. The general non-Boltzmann model systematically incorpo…
Experiment Directed Simulations (EDS) is a method within a class of techniques seeking to improve molecular simulations by minimally biasing the system Hamiltonian to reproduce certain experimental observables. In a previous application of EDS to ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulation-based on electronic density functional theory (DFT), the AIMD simulations of water were biased to reproduce its experimentally derived solvation structure. In particular, by solely biasing the O-O pair correlation functions, other structural and dynamical properties that were not biased were improved. In …
Recent experiments have shown that the out-of-plane dielectric constant of water confined in nanoslits of graphite and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is vanishingly small. Despite extensive effort based mainly on classical force-field molecular dynamics (FFMD) approaches, the origin of this phenomenon is under debate. Here we used ab initio molecular dynamics simulations (AIMD) and AIMD-trained machine learning potentials to explore the structure and electronic properties of water confined inside graphene and hBN slits. We found that the reduced dielectric constant arises mainly from the anti-p…
Structure and Dynamics of the Instantaneous Water/Vapor Interface Revisited by Path-Integral and Ab-Initio Molecular Dynamics Simulations
通过路径积分和第二代Car-Parrinello从头算分子动力学模拟结合瞬时表面定义重新审视水/蒸汽界面的结构和动力学[A. P. Willard和D. Chandler，J.Phys.Chem.B114，1954（2010）]。与之前的研究一致，我们发现最顶层水分子的一个OH键从水中指向汽相，而下层的方向则相反。在它们之间，检测到另外的水层，其中分子平行于瞬时水面排列。
In this study we investigate the nuclear quantum effects (NQEs) on the acidity constant (pKA) of liquid water isotopologues at the ambient condition by path integral molecular dynamics (PIMD) simulations. We compared simulations using a fully explicit solvent model with a classical polarizable force field, density functional tight binding, and ab initio density functional theory, which correspond to empirical, semiempirical, and ab initio PIMD simulations, respectively. The centroid variable with respect to the proton coordination number of a water molecule was restrained to compute the gradie…
Polyatomic molecules in strong laser fields can undergo substantial nuclear motion within tens of femtoseconds. Ion imaging methods based on dissociation or Coulomb explosion therefore have difficulty faithfully recording the geometry dependence of the field ionization that initiates the dissociation process. Here we compare the strong-field double ionization and subsequent dissociation of water (both H$_2$O and D$_2$O) in 10-fs and 40-fs 800-nm laser pulses. We find that 10-fs pulses turn off before substantial internuclear motion occurs, whereas rapid internuclear motion can take place durin…
We report calculations of the surface tension of the water-air interface using ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations. We investigate the simulation cell size dependence of the surface tension of water from force field molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, which show that the calculated surface tension increases with increasing simulation cell size, thereby illustrating that a correction for finite size effects is required for the small system used in the AIMD simulation. The AIMD simulations reveal that the double-ξ basis set overestimates the experimentally measured surface tension d…
