Extracting Covalent and Ionic Structures from Usual Delocalized Wave Functions: The Electron-Expansion Methodology

An analysis of valence electronic structure from a viewpoint of resonance theory: Tautomerization of formamide and diazadiboretidine

The resonance theory is still very useful in understanding the valence electron structure. However, such a viewpoint is not usually obtained by general-purpose quantum chemical calculations, instead requires rather special treatment such as valence bond methods. In this study, we propose a method based on second quantization to analyze the results obtained by general-purpose quantum chemical calculations from the local point of view of electronic structure and analyze diazadiboretidine and the tautomerization of formamide. This method requires only the "PS"-matrix, consisting of the density matrix (P-matrix) and overlap matrix, and can be computed with a comparable load to that of Mulliken population analysis. A key feature of the method is that, unlike other methods proposed so far, it makes direct use of the results of general-purpose quantum chemical calculations.

Growth of phthalocyanine doped and undoped nanotubes using mild synthesis conditions for development of novel oxygen reduction catalysts

Precious metal alloys have been the predominant electrocatalyst used for oxygen reduction in fuel cells since the 1960s. Although performance of these catalysts is high, they do have drawbacks. The two main problems with precious metal alloys are catalyst passivation and cost. This is why new novel catalysts are being developed and employed for oxygen reduction. This paper details the low temperature solvothermal synthesis and characterization of carbon nanotubes that have been doped with both iron and cobalt centered phthalocyanine. The synthesis is a novel low-temperature, supercritical solvent synthesis that reduces halocarbons to form a metal chloride byproduct and carbon nanotubes. Perchlorinated phthalocyanine was added to the nanotube synthesis to incorporate the phthalocyanine structure into the graphene sheets of the nanotubes to produce doped nanotubes that have the catalytic oxygen reduction capabilities of the metallo-phthalocyanine and the advantageous material qualities of carbon nanotubes. The cobalt phthalocyanine doped carbon nanotubes showed a half wave oxygen reduction potential of -0.050 ± 0.005 V vs Hg\HgO, in comparison to platinum's half wave oxygen reduction potential of -0.197 ± 0.002 V vs Hg\HgO.

An efficient generalized polyelectron population analysis in orbital spaces: the hole-expansion methodology

We present relations leading to an efficient generalized population analysis in orbital spaces of usual delocalized molecular orbital wave functions. Besides the calculation of the diagonal elements of the reduced density matrices of any order, one can also calculate efficiently the probabilities (or, in general, the weights) of various occupation schemes of local electronic structures, by using generalized density operators referring to both electrons and electron holes. Within this population analysis, correlated molecular orbital wave functions can be used, and there are no restrictions to the number of the analyzed electrons and electron holes. It is based on the hole-expansion methodology, according to which a given electronic population is expanded in terms involving only electron holes, which as shown, can be calculated very efficiently; usual difficulties arising from the necessity to handle extremely large local determinantal basis sets are avoided, without introducing approximations. Although an emphasis is given for populations in the basis of orthogonal orbital spaces (providing probabilities), the case of nonorthogonal ones is also considered in order to show the connection of the generalized populations and the traditional weights obtained from valence-bond wave functions. Physically meaningful populations can be obtained by using natural orbitals, such as the natural atomic orbitals (NAOs) (orthogonal orbitals) or the pre-NAO's (nonorthogonal orbitals); numerical applications for pyrrole molecule are presented in the basis of these natural orbitals.