No Arabic abstract
Chlorinated hydrocarbon compounds are of environmental concerns, since they are toxic to humans and other mammals, are widespread, and exposure is hard to avoid. Understanding and improving methods to reduce the amount of the substances is important. We present an atomic-scale calculational study of the adsorption of chlorine-based substance chloroform (CHCl3) on graphene oxide, as a step in estimating the capacity of graphene oxide for filtering out such substances, e.g., from drinking water. The calculations are based on density functional theory (DFT), and the recently developed consistent-exchange functional for the van der Waals density-functional method (vdW-DF-cx) is employed. We obtain values of the chloroform adsorption energy varying from roughly 0.2 to 0.4 eV per molecule. This is comparable to previously found results for chloroform adsorbed directly on clean graphene, using similar calculations. In a wet environment, like filters for drinking water, the graphene will not stay clean and will likely oxidize, and thus adsorption onto graphene oxide, rather than clean graphene, is a more relevant process to study.
A calculational study of the trihalomethanes chloroform (CHCl_3) and bromoform (CHBr_3) adsorbed on graphene is presented. The study uses the van der Waals density functional method vdW-DF to obtain adsorption energies and adsorption structures for these molecules of environmental concern. In this study chloroform is found to adsorb with the H atom pointing away from graphene, with adsorption energy 357 meV (34.4 kJ/mol). For bromoform the calculated adsorption energy is 404 meV (39.0 kJ/mol). The corrugation of graphene as seen by chloroform is small, the difference in adsorption energy along the graphene plane is less than 6 meV.
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 laminated structure of graphene oxide (GO) confers unique interactions with water molecules which may be utilised in a range of applications that require materials with tuneable hygroscopic properties. Precise roles of the expandable interlayer spacing and functional groups in GO laminates are not fully understood till date. Herein, we report experimental and theoretical study on the adsorption and desorption behaviour of water in GO laminates as a function of relative pressure. We have observed that GO imparts excellent water uptake capacity of up to 0.58 gram of water per gram of GO (g g-1), which is much higher than silica gel a conventional desiccant material. More interestingly, the adsorption and desorption kinetics of GO is one order of magnitude higher than silica gel. The observed extraordinary adsorption/desorption rate can be attributed to the high capillary pressure in GO laminates as well as micro meter sized tunnel like wrinkles located at the surface.
Hydrogen bonds (HBs) play a crucial role in the physicochemical properties of ionic liquids (ILs). At present, HBs between cations and anions (Ca-An) or between cations (Ca-Ca) in ILs have been reported extensively. Here, we provided DFT evidences for the exists of HBs between anions (An-An) in the IL 1-(2-hydroxyethyl)-3-methylimidazolium 4-(2-hydroxyethyl)imidazolide [HEMIm][HEIm]. The thermodynamics stabilities of anionic, cationic, and H2O dimers together with ionic pairs were studied by potential energy scans. The results show that the cation-anion pair is the most stable one, while the HB in anionic dimer possesses similar thermodynamics stability to the water dimer. The further geometric, spectral and electronic structure analyses demonstrate that the inter-anionic HB meets the general theoretical criteria of traditional HBs. The strength order of four HBs in complexes is cation-anion pair > H2O dimer = cationic dimer > anionic dimer. The energy decomposition analysis indicates that induction and dispersion interactions are the crucial factors to overcome strong Coulomb repulsions, forming inter-anionic HBs. Lastly, the presence of inter-anionic HBs in ionic cluster has been confirmed by a global minimum search for a system containing two ionic pairs. Even though hydroxyl-functionalized cations are more likely to form HBs with anions, there still have inter-anionic HBs between hydroxyl groups in the low-lying structures. Our studies broaden the understanding of HBs in ionic liquids and support the recently proposed concept of anti-electrostatic HBs.
We study the atomic oxygen adsorption on Pb(111) surface by using density-functional theory within the generalized gradient approximation and a supercell approach. The atomic and energetic properties of purely on-surface and subsurface oxygen structures at the Pb(111) surface are systematically investigated for a wide range of coverages and adsorption sites. The fcc and tetra-II sites (see the text for definition) are found to be energetically preferred for the on-surface and subsurface adsorption, respectively, in the whole range of coverage considered. The on-surface and subsurface oxygen binding energies monotonically increase with the coverage, and the latter is always higher than the former, thus indicating the tendency to the formation of oxygen islands (clusters) and the higher stability of subsurface adsorption. The on-surface and subsurface diffusion-path energetics of atomic oxygen, and the activation barriers for the O penetration from the on-surface to the subsurface sites are presented at low and high coverages. In particular, it is shown that the penetration barrier from the on-surface hcp to the subsurface tetra-I site is as small as 65 meV at low coverage ($Theta $=0.25). The other properties of the O/Pb(111) system, including the charge distribution, the lattice relaxation, the work function, and the electronic density of states, are also studied and discussed in detail, which consistently show the gradually stabilizing ionic O-Pb bond with increase of the oxygen coverage.