Item Details

title

Decorating Crystallites with Atoms and Small Molecules: A First-Principles Investigation

author

ABBASPOUR TAMIJANI, ALI

abstract

Adsorption of gaseous particles on solids offers a broad array of idiosyncratic functional properties such as those observed in scattering experiments. Nowadays, it is well-entrenched that physisorption acts as a precursor paving the way for chemisorption and subsequent catalytic processes. Adsorption of noble gases and small probe molecules onto crystalline surfaces epitomizes physisorption. Due to its intricate nature, a delineation of the physical adsorption phenomenon is necessitated. This has led to an immense number of studies centralized on the basis of adsorption. The physical adsorption onto semiconducting and insulating surfaces with rutile and rock-salt structures respectively, was investigated using van der Waals corrected-density functional theory. DFT-D3, DFT-TS, vdW-DF and its variants were employed to carry out the calculations. Surface energies and atomic displacements were computed for the (100) plane of MgO as well as the (110) facet of rutile TiO2 and rutile-type SiO2, GeO2 and ZnF2. Several examples of physisorption of gas particles on a number of the aforementioned surfaces were modeled using dispersion corrected-DFT. The obtained values were in excellent agreement with those found in the pertinent literature.

subject

Adsorption Energy

Binding Energy

Density Functional Theory

Dispersion-corrected DFT

Rutile

Surface Energy

contributor

Salam, Akbar (committee chair)

Kondepudi, Dilip (committee member)

Lachgar, Abdessadek (committee member)

Welker, Mark E (committee member)

Holzwarth, Natalie (committee member)

date

2017-01-14T09:35:19Z (accessioned)

2019-01-13T09:30:12Z (available)

2016 (issued)

degree

Chemistry (discipline)

embargo

2019-01-13 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/64176 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Dissertation