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Krumland J, Cocchi C. Ab Initio Modeling of Mixed-Dimensional Heterostructures: A Path Forward. J Phys Chem Lett 2024; 15:5350-5358. [PMID: 38728611 PMCID: PMC11129309 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.4c00803] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/15/2024] [Revised: 04/26/2024] [Accepted: 05/08/2024] [Indexed: 05/12/2024]
Abstract
Understanding the electronic structure of mixed-dimensional heterostructures is essential for maximizing their application potential. However, accurately modeling such interfaces is challenging due to the complex interplay between the subsystems. We employ a computational framework integrating first-principles methods, including GW, density functional theory (DFT), and the polarizable continuum model, to elucidate the electronic structure of mixed-dimensional heterojunctions formed by free-base phthalocyanines and monolayer molybdenum disulfide. We assess the impact of dielectric screening across various scenarios, from isolated molecules to organic films on a substrate-supported monolayer. Our findings show that while polarization effects cause significant renormalization of molecular energy levels, band energies and alignments in the most relevant setup can be accurately predicted through DFT simulations of the individual subsystems. Additionally, we analyze orbital hybridization, revealing potential pathways for interfacial charge transfer. This study offers new insights into hybrid inorganic/organic interfaces and provides a practical computational protocol suitable for scaled-up studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jannis Krumland
- Institute
of Physics, Carl von Ossietzky Universität
Oldenburg, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
- Physics
Department and IRIS Adlershof, Humboldt-Universität
zu Berlin, 12489 Berlin, Germany
| | - Caterina Cocchi
- Institute
of Physics, Carl von Ossietzky Universität
Oldenburg, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
- Physics
Department and IRIS Adlershof, Humboldt-Universität
zu Berlin, 12489 Berlin, Germany
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2
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Capone M, Romanelli M, Castaldo D, Parolin G, Bello A, Gil G, Vanzan M. A Vision for the Future of Multiscale Modeling. ACS PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY AU 2024; 4:202-225. [PMID: 38800726 PMCID: PMC11117712 DOI: 10.1021/acsphyschemau.3c00080] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2023] [Revised: 01/31/2024] [Accepted: 02/01/2024] [Indexed: 05/29/2024]
Abstract
The rise of modern computer science enabled physical chemistry to make enormous progresses in understanding and harnessing natural and artificial phenomena. Nevertheless, despite the advances achieved over past decades, computational resources are still insufficient to thoroughly simulate extended systems from first principles. Indeed, countless biological, catalytic and photophysical processes require ab initio treatments to be properly described, but the breadth of length and time scales involved makes it practically unfeasible. A way to address these issues is to couple theories and algorithms working at different scales by dividing the system into domains treated at different levels of approximation, ranging from quantum mechanics to classical molecular dynamics, even including continuum electrodynamics. This approach is known as multiscale modeling and its use over the past 60 years has led to remarkable results. Considering the rapid advances in theory, algorithm design, and computing power, we believe multiscale modeling will massively grow into a dominant research methodology in the forthcoming years. Hereby we describe the main approaches developed within its realm, highlighting their achievements and current drawbacks, eventually proposing a plausible direction for future developments considering also the emergence of new computational techniques such as machine learning and quantum computing. We then discuss how advanced multiscale modeling methods could be exploited to address critical scientific challenges, focusing on the simulation of complex light-harvesting processes, such as natural photosynthesis. While doing so, we suggest a cutting-edge computational paradigm consisting in performing simultaneous multiscale calculations on a system allowing the various domains, treated with appropriate accuracy, to move and extend while they properly interact with each other. Although this vision is very ambitious, we believe the quick development of computer science will lead to both massive improvements and widespread use of these techniques, resulting in enormous progresses in physical chemistry and, eventually, in our society.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matteo Capone
- Department
of Physical and Chemical Sciences, University
of L’Aquila, L’Aquila 67010, Italy
| | - Marco Romanelli
- Department
of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova, Padova 35131, Italy
| | - Davide Castaldo
- Department
of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova, Padova 35131, Italy
| | - Giovanni Parolin
- Department
of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova, Padova 35131, Italy
| | - Alessandro Bello
- Department
of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova, Padova 35131, Italy
- Department
of Physics, Informatics and Mathematics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena 41125, Italy
| | - Gabriel Gil
- Department
of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova, Padova 35131, Italy
- Instituto
de Cibernética, Matemática y Física (ICIMAF), La Habana 10400, Cuba
| | - Mirko Vanzan
- Department
of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova, Padova 35131, Italy
- Department
of Physics, University of Milano, Milano 20133, Italy
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3
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Ambrosio F, Wiktor J, Landi A, Peluso A. Charge Localization in Acene Crystals from Ab Initio Electronic Structure. J Phys Chem Lett 2023; 14:3343-3351. [PMID: 36994951 PMCID: PMC10084468 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c00191] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2023] [Accepted: 03/10/2023] [Indexed: 06/19/2023]
Abstract
The performance of Koopmans-compliant hybrid functionals in reproducing the electronic structure of organic crystals is tested for a series of acene crystals. The calculated band gaps are found to be consistent with those achieved with the GW method at a fraction of the computational cost and in excellent accord with the experimental results at room temperature, when including the thermal renormalization. The energetics of excess holes and electrons reveals a struggle between polaronic localization and band-like delocalization. The consequences of these results on the transport properties of acene crystals are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Francesco Ambrosio
- Dipartimento
di Chimica e Biologia Adolfo Zambelli, Università
di Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, I-84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy
- Dipartimento
di Scienze, Università degli Studi
della Basilicata, Viale
dell’Ateneo Lucano, 10-85100 Potenza, Italy
| | - Julia Wiktor
- Department
of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden
| | - Alessandro Landi
- Dipartimento
di Chimica e Biologia Adolfo Zambelli, Università
di Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, I-84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy
| | - Andrea Peluso
- Dipartimento
di Chimica e Biologia Adolfo Zambelli, Università
di Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, I-84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy
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Marsili M, Corni S. Electronic Dynamics of a Molecular System Coupled to a Plasmonic Nanoparticle Combining the Polarizable Continuum Model and Many-Body Perturbation Theory. THE JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY. C, NANOMATERIALS AND INTERFACES 2022; 126:8768-8776. [PMID: 35655939 PMCID: PMC9150096 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.2c02209] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2022] [Revised: 04/28/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
The efficiency of plasmonic metallic nanoparticles in harvesting and concentrating light energy in their proximity triggers a wealth of important and intriguing phenomena. For example, spectroscopies are able to reach single-molecule and intramolecule sensitivities, and important chemical reactions can be effectively photocatalyzed. For the real-time description of the coupled dynamics of a molecule's electronic system and of a plasmonic nanoparticle, a methodology has been recently proposed (J. Phys. Chem. C. 120, 2016, 28774-28781) which combines the classical description of the nanoparticle as a polarizable continuum medium with a quantum-mechanical description of the molecule treated at the time-dependent configuration interaction (TDCI) level. In this work, we extend this methodology by describing the molecule using many-body perturbation theory: the molecule's excitation energies, transition dipoles, and potentials computed at the GW/Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) level. This allows us to overcome current limitations of TDCI in terms of achievable accuracy without compromising on the accessible molecular sizes. We illustrate the developed scheme by characterizing the coupled nanoparticle/molecule dynamics of two prototype molecules, LiCN and p-nitroaniline.
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Affiliation(s)
- Margherita Marsili
- Dipartimento
di Science Chimiche, Università di
Padova, via F. Marzolo 1, I-35131, Padova, Italy
| | - Stefano Corni
- Dipartimento
di Science Chimiche, Università di
Padova, via F. Marzolo 1, I-35131, Padova, Italy
- CNR
Institute of Nanoscience, Via Campi 213/A, 41125 Modena, Italy
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Wildman A, Tao Z, Zhao L, Hammes-Schiffer S, Li X. Solvated Nuclear-Electronic Orbital Structure and Dynamics. J Chem Theory Comput 2022; 18:1340-1346. [PMID: 35179376 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.1c01285] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Nonadiabatic dynamical processes such as proton-coupled electron transfer and excited state intramolecular proton transfer have been the subject of much research. One of the promising theoretical methods to describe these processes is the nuclear-electronic orbital (NEO) approach. This approach inherently accounts for nuclear quantum effects within quantum chemistry calculations, and it has recently been extended to directly simulate nonadiabatic processes with the development of real-time NEO methods. These processes can also be significantly dependent on the surrounding chemical environment, however, and capturing the effects of the environment is often necessary for analyzing experimentally relevant systems. This work couples the NEO density functional theory and real-time time-dependent density functional theory approaches with solvation through the polarizable continuum model. The effects of this coupling are investigated for ground state properties, solvent-dependent vibrational frequencies, and direct excited state intramolecular proton transfer dynamics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew Wildman
- Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, United States
| | - Zhen Tao
- Department of Chemistry, Yale University, 225 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, United States
| | - Luning Zhao
- Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, United States
| | - Sharon Hammes-Schiffer
- Department of Chemistry, Yale University, 225 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, United States
| | - Xiaosong Li
- Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, United States.,Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington 99354, United States
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Günder D, Valencia AM, Guerrini M, Breuer T, Cocchi C, Witte G. Polarization Resolved Optical Excitation of Charge-Transfer Excitons in PEN:PFP Cocrystalline Films: Limits of Nonperiodic Modeling. J Phys Chem Lett 2021; 12:9899-9905. [PMID: 34610238 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.1c02761] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Charge-transfer excitons (CTXs) at organic donor/acceptor interfaces are considered important intermediates for charge separation in photovoltaic devices. Crystalline model systems provide microscopic insights into the nature of such states as they enable microscopic structure-property investigations. Here, we use angular-resolved UV/vis absorption spectroscopy to characterize the CTXs of crystalline pentacene:perfluoro-pentacene (PEN:PFP) films allowing determination of the polarization of this state. This analysis is complemented by first-principles many-body calculations, performed on the three-dimensional PEN:PFP cocrystal, which confirm that the lowest-energy excitation is a CTX. Analogous simulations performed on bimolecular clusters are unable to reproduce this state. We ascribe this failure to the lack of long-range interactions and wave function periodicity in these cluster calculations, which appear to remain a valid tool for modeling properties of organic materials ruled by local intermolecular couplings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Darius Günder
- Philipps-Universität Marburg, Molekulare Festkörperphysik, 35032 Marburg, Germany
| | - Ana M Valencia
- Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Institute of Physics, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Straße 9, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
| | - Michele Guerrini
- Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Institute of Physics, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Straße 9, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
| | - Tobias Breuer
- Philipps-Universität Marburg, Molekulare Festkörperphysik, 35032 Marburg, Germany
| | - Caterina Cocchi
- Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Institute of Physics, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Straße 9, 26129 Oldenburg, Germany
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Physics Department and IRIS Adlershof, Zum Großen Windkanal 2, 12489 Berlin, Germany
| | - Gregor Witte
- Philipps-Universität Marburg, Molekulare Festkörperphysik, 35032 Marburg, Germany
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