تُشتَغِل التحليل الأولي للمكونات الأساسية في الإدخال البوتاسيوم في الجرافيت. وتحسن الربط في مركب البوتاسيوم والجرافيت بشكل معقول من خلال حسابات الديناميكية المحلية النصفية للديناميكية الكتلية (DFT). ومع ذلك، لاستكشاف طاقة تكوين الإدخال من الأجسام البوتاسيوم النقية والجرافيت، يتطلب استخدام وصف لربط الطبقة الجرافيتية وبالتالي حساباً متناسقاً للتفاعلات التباعدية غير المحلية. ويتم تضمين هذا بشكل سلس مع الديناميكية الكتلية العادية باستخدام تقنية الديناميكية الكتلية الفان دير والس (vdW-DF) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92، 246401 (2004)]. ووجد أن استخدام vdW-DF يثبط البلور الجرافيتي، مع معاملات البلور في توافق مع التجارب معقول. للجرافيت والجرافيت المحضر بالبوتاسيوم، تشير المعاملات الى مثل فاصل الربط، طاقة ربط الطبقة، طاقة التكوين، والمعامل الحجمي. كما تشير الطاقات الى طاقة الامتصاص والامتصاص الفرعي للبوتاسيوم. ووجد أن وصف vdW-DF، مقارنة مع النهج المحلي النصفي التقليدي، يضعف الاستجابة المرنة بشكل ضعيف.
Potassium intercalation in graphite is investigated by first-principles theory. The bonding in the potassium-graphite compound is reasonably well accounted for by traditional semilocal density functional theory (DFT) calculations. However, to investigate the intercalate formation energy from pure potassium atoms and graphite requires use of a description of the graphite interlayer binding and thus a consistent account of the nonlocal dispersive interactions. This is included seamlessly with ordinary DFT by a van der Waals density functional (vdW-DF) approach [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 246401 (2004)]. The use of the vdW-DF is found to stabilize the graphite crystal, with crystal parameters in fair agreement with experiments. For graphite and potassium-intercalated graphite structural parameters such as binding separation, layer binding energy, formation energy, and bulk modulus are reported. Also the adsorption and sub-surface potassium absorption energies are reported. The vdW-DF description, compared with the traditional semilocal approach, is found to weakly soften the elastic response.
Modeling layered intercalation compounds from first principles poses a problem, as many of their properties are determined by a subtle balance between van der Waals interactions and chemical or Madelung terms, and a good description of van der Waals interactions is often lacking. Using van der Waals density functionals we study the structures, phonons and energetics of the archetype layered intercalation compound Li-graphite. Intercalation of Li in graphite leads to stable systems with calculated intercalation energies of $-0.2$ to $-0.3$~eV/Li atom, (referred to bulk graphite and Li metal). The fully loaded stage 1 and stage 2 compounds LiC$_6$ and Li$_{1/2}$C$_6$ are stable, corresponding to two-dimensional $sqrt3timessqrt3$ lattices of Li atoms intercalated between two graphene planes. Stage $N>2$ structures are unstable compared to dilute stage 2 compounds with the same concentration. At elevated temperatures dilute stage 2 compounds easily become disordered, but the structure of Li$_{3/16}$C$_6$ is relatively stable, corresponding to a $sqrt7timessqrt7$ in-plane packing of Li atoms. First-principles calculations, along with a Bethe-Peierls model of finite temperature effects, allow for a microscopic description of the observed voltage profiles.
The adsorption of an adenine molecule on graphene is studied using a first-principles van der Waals functional (vdW-DF) [Dion et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 246401 (2004)]. The cohesive energy of an ordered adenine overlayer is also estimated. For the adsorption of a single molecule, we determine the optimal binding configuration and adsorption energy by translating and rotating the molecule. The adsorption energy for a single molecule of adenine is found to be 711 meV, which is close to the calculated adsorption energy of the similar-sized naphthalene. Based on the single molecular binding configuration, we estimate the cohesive energy of a two-dimensional ordered overlayer. We find a significantly stronger binding energy for the ordered overlayer than for single-molecule adsorption.
The adsorption of fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine diatomic molecules on graphene has been investigated using density functional theory with taking into account nonlocal correlation effects by means of vdW-DF approach. It is shown that the van der Waals interaction plays a crucial role in the formation of chemical bonding between graphene and halogen molecules, and is therefore important for a proper description of adsorption in this system. In-plane orientation of the molecules has been found to be more stable than the orientation perpendicular to the graphene layer. In the cases of F$_2$, Br$_2$ and I$_2$ we also found an ionic contribution to the binding energy, slowly vanishing with distance. Analysis of the electronic structure shows that ionic interaction arises due to the charge transfer from graphene to the molecules. Furthermore, we found that the increase of impurity concentration leads to the conduction band formation in graphene due to interaction between halogen molecules. In addition, graphite intercalation by halogen molecules has been investigated. In the presence of halogen molecules the binding between graphite layers becomes significantly weaker, which is in accordance with the results of recent experiments on sonochemical exfoliation of intercalated graphite.
The past few years has brought renewed focus on the physics behind the class of materials characterized by long-range interactions and wide regions of low electron density, sparse matter. There is now much work on developing the appropriate algorithms and codes able to correctly describe this class of materials within a parameter-free quantum physical description. In particular, van der Waals (vdW) forces play a major role in building up material cohesion in sparse matter. This work presents an application to the vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) bulk structure of t
The dispersion interaction between a pair of parallel DNA double-helix structures is investigated by means of the van der Waals density functional (vdW-DF) method. Each double-helix structure consists of an infinite repetition of one B-DNA coil with 10 base pairs. This parameter-free density functional theory (DFT) study illustrates the initial step in a proposed vdW-DF computational strategy for large biomolecular problems. The strategy is to first perform a survey of interaction geometries, based on the evaluation of the van der Waals (vdW) attraction, and then limit the evaluation of the remaining DFT parts (specifically the expensive study of the kinetic-energy repulsion) to the thus identified interesting geometries. Possibilities for accelerating this second step is detailed in a separate study. For the B-DNA dimer, the variation in van der Waals attraction is explored at relatively short distances (although beyond the region of density overlap) for a 360 degrees rotation. This study highlights the role of the structural motifs, like the grooves, in enhancing or reducing the vdW interaction strength. We find that to a first approximation, it is possible to compare the DNA double strand at large wall-to-wall separations to the cylindrical shape of a carbon nanotube (which is almost isotropic under rotation). We compare our first-principles results with the atom-based dispersive interaction predicted by DFT-D2 [J. Comp. Chem. 27, 1787 (2006)] and find agreement in the asymptotic region. However, we also find that the differences in the enhancement that occur at shorter distances reveal characteristic features that result from the fact that the vdW-DF method is an electron-based (as opposed to atom-based) description.