No Arabic abstract
We investigate the molecular acceptors 3,4,9,10-perylene-tetracarboxylic acid dianhydride (PTCDA), 2,3,5,6-tetra uoro-7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (F4TCNQ), and 4,5,9,10-pyrenetetraone (PYTON) on Ag(111) using densityfunctional theory. For two groups of the HSE(alpha, omega) family of exchange-correlation functionals (omega = 0 and omega = 0.2AA) we study the isolated components as well as the combined systems as a function of the amount of exact-exchange (alpha). We find that hybrid functionals favour electron transfer to the adsorbate. Comparing to experimental work-function data, we report for (alpha) ca. 0.25 a notable but small improvement over (semi)local functionals for the interface dipole. Although Kohn-Sham eigenvalues are only approximate representations of ionization energies, incidentally, at this value also the density of states agrees well with the photoelectron spectra. However, increasing (alpha) to values for which the energy of the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital matches the experimental electron affinity in the gas phase worsens both the interface dipole and the density of states. Our results imply that semi-local DFT calculations may often be adequate for conjugated organic molecules on metal surfaces and that the much more computationally demanding hybrid functionals yield only small improvements.
The electronic properties of hybrid organic-inorganic semiconductor interfaces depend strongly on the alignment of the electronic carrier levels in the organic/inorganic components. In the present work, we address this energy level alignment from first principles theory for two paradigmatic organic-inorganic semiconductor interfaces, the singlet fission materials tetracene and pentacene on H/Si(111), using all-electron hybrid density functional theory. For isolated tetracene on H/Si(111), a type I-like heterojunction (lowest-energy electron and hole states on Si) is found. For isolated pentacene, the molecular and semiconductor valence band edges are degenerate. For monolayer films, we show how to construct supercell geometries with up to 1,192 atoms, which minimize the strain between the inorganic surface and an organic monolayer film. Based on these models, we predict the formation of type II heterojunctions (electron states on Si, hole-like states on the organic species) for both acenes, indicating that charge separation at the interface between the organic and inorganic components is favored. The paper discusses the steps needed to find appropriate low-energy interface geometries for weakly bonded organic molecules and films on inorganic substrates from first principles, a necessary prerequisite for any computational level alignment prediction.
This work describes an innovative concept for the development of organized molecular systems thanks to the template effect of the pre-structured semi-conductive SmSi(111) interface. This substrate was selected because Sm deposition in the submonolayer range leads to a 8x2-reconstruction, which is a well-defined one-dimensional semi-metallic structure. Adsorption of aromatic molecules (1,4-di-(9-ethynyltriptycenyl)-benzene) on SmSi(111)-8x2 and Si(111)-7x7 interfaces has been investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) at room temperature. Density functional theory (DFT) and semi-empirical (ASED+) calculations have been performed to define the nature of the molecular adsorption sites of the target molecule on SmSi as well as their self-alignment on this interface. Experimental data and theoretical results are in good agreement.
A combined approach of first-principles density-functional calculations and the systematic cluster-expansion scheme is presented. The dipole, quadrupole, and Coulomb matrix elements obtained from ab initio calculations are used as an input to the microscopic many-body theory of the excitonic optical response. To demonstrate the hybrid approach for a nontrivial semiconductor system, the near-bandgap excitonic optical absorption of rutile TiO2 is computed. Comparison with experiments yields strong evidence that the observed near-bandgap features are due to a dipole-forbidden but quadrupole-allowed 1s-exciton state.
We investigate optical absorption spectra obtained through time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) based on nonempirical hybrid functionals that are designed to correctly reproduce the dielectric function. The comparison with state-of-the-art $GW$ calculations followed by the solution of the Bethe-Sapeter equation (BSE-$GW$) shows close agreement for both the transition energies and the main features of the spectra. We confront TD-DFT with BSE-$GW$ by focusing on the model dielectric function and the local exchange-correlation kernel. The present TD-DFT approach achieves the accuracy of BSE-$GW$ at a fraction of the computational cost.
Octahedral Fe$^{2+}$ molecules are particularly interesting as they often exhibit a spin-crossover transition. In spite of the many efforts aimed at assessing the performances of density functional theory for such systems, an exchange-correlation functional able to account accurately for the energetic of the various possible spin-states has not been identified yet. Here we critically discuss the issues related to the theoretical description of this class of molecules from first principles. In particular we present a comparison between different density functionals for four ions, namely [Fe(H$_2$O)$_6$]$^{2+}$, [Fe(NH$_3$)$_6$]$^{2+}$, [Fe(NCH)$_6$]$^{2+}$ and [Fe(CO)$_6$]$^{2+}$. These are characterized by different ligand-field splittings and ground state spin multiplicities. Since no experimental data are available for the gas phase, the density functional theory results are benchmarked against those obtained with diffusion Monte Carlo, one of the most accurate methods available to compute ground state total energies of quantum systems. On the one hand, we show that most of the functionals considered provide a good description of the geometry and of the shape of the potential energy surfaces. On the other hand, the same functionals fail badly in predicting the energy differences between the various spin states. In the case of [Fe(H$_2$O)$_6$]$^{2+}$, [Fe(NH$_3$)$_6$]$^{2+}$, [Fe(NCH)$_6$]$^{2+}$, this failure is related to the drastic underestimation of the exchange energy. Therefore quite accurate results can be achieved with hybrid functionals including about 50% of Hartree-Fock exchange. In contrast, in the case of [Fe(CO)$_6$]$^{2+}$, the failure is likely to be caused by the multiconfigurational character of the ground state wave-function and no suitable exchange and correlation functional has been identified.