Band gap, Jahn-Teller deformation, octahedra rotation in transition metal perovskites LaTiO 3

The LaTiO3 perovskite (where Ti is in a d1 state) is investigated by using an all electron Gaussian basis and many functionals, ranging from pure GGA (PBE), to hybrids (full range, B3LYP and PBE0, and range separated, HSE06) to Hartree Fock. Recently, Varignon et al. (Phys. Rev. Res 1, 033131, 2019), showed that, when GGA+U or HSE06 are used, a metallic solution and fractional occupancy of the t2 g subshell are obtained. Here, it is shown that when a full range hybrid functional is used, an integer occupancy is obtained, as suggested by the Jahn-Teller theorem. When the exact exchange percentage varies from 0 to 100, the system is insulating when it exceeds 20. By reducing progressively the symmetry from cubic down to orthorhombic, the relative importance of the Jahn-Teller deformation and of the rotation of the octahedra is explored.

Phenylboronic ester-modified polymeric nanoparticles for promoting TRP2 peptide antigen delivery in cancer immunotherapy

The tremendous development of peptide-based cancer vaccine has attracted incremental interest as a powerful approach in cancer management, prevention and treatment. As successful as tumor vaccine has been, major challenges associated with achieving efficient immune response against cancer are (1) drainage to and retention in lymph nodes; (2) uptake by dendritic cells (DCs); (3) activation of DCs. In order to overcome these barriers, here we construct PBE-modified TRP2 nanovaccine, which comprises TRP2 peptide tumor antigen and diblock copolymer PEG-b-PAsp grafted with phenylboronic ester (PBE). We confirmed that this TRP2 nanovaccine can be effectively trapped into lymph node, uptake by dendritic cells and induce DC maturation, relying on increased negative charge, ROS response and pH response. Consistently, this vehicle loaded with TRP2 peptide could boost the strongest T cell immune response against melanoma in vivo and potentiate antitumor efficacy both in tumor prevention and tumor treatment without any exogenous adjuvant. Furthermore, the TRP2 nanovaccine can suppress the tumor growth and prolong animal survival time, which may result from its synergistic effect of inhibiting tumor immunosuppression and increasing cytotoxic lymphocyte (CTL) response. Hence this type of PBE-modified nanovaccine would be widely used as a simple, safe and robust platform to deliver other antigen in cancer immunotherapy.

Generalized gradient approximation adjusted to transition metals properties: Key roles of exchange and local spin density

Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) and PBE adapted for solids (PBEsol) are exchange-correlation (xc) functionals widely used in density functional theory simulations. Their differences are the exchange, μ, and correlation, β, coefficients, causing PBEsol to lose the Local Spin Density (LSD) response. Here, the μ/β two-dimensional (2D) accuracy landscape is analyzed between PBE and PBEsol xc functional limits for 27 transition metal (TM) bulks, as well as for 81 TM surfaces. Several properties are analyzed, including the shortest interatomic distances, cohesive energies, and bulk moduli for TM bulks, and surface relaxation degree, surface energies, and work functions for TM surfaces. The exploration, comparing the accuracy degree with respect experimental values, reveals that the found xc minimum, called VV, being a PBE variant, represents an improvement of 5% in mean absolute percentage error terms, whereas this improvement reaches ~11% for VVsol, a xc resulting from the restoration of LSD response in PBEsol, and so regarded as its variant.

Theoretical determination of half-wave potentials for phenanthroline-, bipyridine-, acetylacetonate-, and glycinate-containing copper (II) complexes

We report a protocol for the evaluation of theoretical half-wave potential (E_1/2) using a set of 22 mixed chelate copper (II) complexes containing 1,10-phenanthroline and 2,2'-bipyridine derivatives as primary ligands, and acetylacetonate or glycinate as secondary ligands (formally from the Casiopeínas® family) for which accurate experimental values were determined in a 2/5 mixture of ethanol/water. We have calibrated the BP86, PBE, PBE0, B3LYP, M06-2X, and ω-B97XD functionals, using the Los Alamos LANL2DZ and Stuttgart-Köln SDDAll effective core potentials for the Cu and Fe atoms and the 6-311+G* basis set for the C, H, O, and N atoms. To address the solvent effects, we have saturated the first solvation shell with up to 9 water molecules for the explicit model and compared it with the Continuum Like-Polarizable Continuum Model (CPCM) implicit solvent scheme. We found that the PBE/LANL2DZ-6-311+G* protocol (with the CPCM implicit solvent scheme with an effective dielectric constant ε = 64.9121 for the 2/5 mixture of ethanol/water) yields the overall best performance. The theoretical values are compared with experimental data, three of which are reported here for the first time. We find good correlations between the theoretical and experimental E_1/2 values for the 2,2'-bipyridine derivatives (R² = 0.987, MAE = 86 mV) and 1,10-phenanthroline derivatives (R² = 0.802, MAE = 58.4 mV). The correlation trends have been explained in terms of the copper atom's ability to be reduced in the presence of the ligands. The Gibbs free energy differences at 298 K obtained for the redox reactions show that the more flexible secondary ligands (acetylacetonate) lead to larger entropic contributions which, as expected, increase the average MAE values as compared with the more rigid ligands (glycine). The present protocol yields lower MAEs as compared with previous approaches for similar mixed and flexible Cu(II) complexes.

Ligand-Modified Boron-Doped Diamond Surface: DFT Insights into the Electronic Properties of Biofunctionalization

With the increasing power of computation systems, theoretical calculations provide a means for quick determination of material properties, laying out a research plan, and lowering material development costs. One of the most common is Density Functional Theory (DFT), which allows us to simulate the structure of chemical molecules or crystals and their interaction. In developing a new generation of biosensors, understanding the nature of functional linkers, antibodies, and ligands become essential. In this study, we used DFT to model a bulk boron-doped diamond slab, modified by a functional linker and a surrogate proteins ligand. DTF calculations enable the prediction of electronic transport properties in an electrochemical sensor setup, composed of a boron-doped diamond electrode functionalized by 4-amino benzoic acids and a target surrogated protein-ligand for influenza. Electron conduction pathways and other signatures associated with the detection and measurement of the target analyte are revealed.

Synergy between Fe and Ni in the optimal performance of (Ni,Fe)OOH catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction

The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is critical to solar production of fuels, but the reaction mechanism underlying the performance for a best OER catalyst, Fe-doped NiOOH [(Ni,Fe)OOH], remains highly controversial. We used grand canonical quantum mechanics to predict the OER mechanisms including kinetics and thus overpotentials as a function of Fe content in (Ni,Fe)OOH catalysts. We find that density functional theory (DFT) without exact exchange predicts that addition of Fe does not reduce the overpotential much. However, DFT with exact exchange predicts dramatic improvement in performance for (Ni,Fe)OOH, leading to an overpotential of 0.42 V and a Tafel slope of 23 mV/decade (dec), in good agreement with experiments, 0.3-0.4 V and 30 mV/dec. We reveal that the high spin [Formula: see text] Fe(IV) leads to efficient formation of an active O radical intermediate, while the closed shell [Formula: see text] Ni(IV) catalyzes the subsequent O-O coupling, and thus it is the synergy between Fe and Ni that delivers the optimal performance for OER.

Benchmark, DFT assessments, cooperativity, and energy decomposition analysis of the hydrogen bonds in HCN/HNC oligomeric complexes

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and its tautomer hydrogen isocyanide (HNC) are relevant for extraterrestrial chemistry and possible relation to the origin of biomolecules. Several processes and reactions involving these molecules depend on their intermolecular interactions that can lead to aggregates and liquids especially due to the hydrogen bonds. It is thus important to comprehend, to describe, and to quantify their hydrogen bonds, mainly their nature and the cooperativity effects. A systematic study of all linear complexes up to pentamers of HCN and HNC is presented. CCSD(T)/CBS energy calculations, with and without basis set superposition error (BSSE) corrections for energies and geometries, provided a suitable set of benchmarks. Approximated methods based on the density functional theory (DFT) such as BP86, PBE, TPSS, B3LYP, CAM-B3LYP with and without dispersion corrections and long-range corrections, were assessed to describe the interaction energies and cooperativity effects. These assessments are relevant to select DFT functionals for liquid simulations. Energy decomposition analysis was performed at the PBE/STO-TZ2P level and provided insights into the nature of the hydrogen bonds, which are dominated by the electrostatic component. In addition, several linear relationships between the various energy components and the interaction energy were obtained. The cooperativity energy was also found to be practically linear with respect to the interaction energy, which may be relevant for designing and/or correcting empirical force fields. Graphical Abstract Hydrogen bonds in HCN/HNC oligomeric complexesᅟ.

Free-Energy Barriers and Reaction Mechanisms for the Electrochemical Reduction of CO on the Cu(100) Surface, Including Multiple Layers of Explicit Solvent at pH 0

The great interest in the photochemical reduction from CO2 to fuels and chemicals has focused attention on Cu because of its unique ability to catalyze formation of carbon-containing fuels and chemicals. A particular goal is to learn how to modify the Cu catalysts to enhance the production selectivity while reducing the energy requirements (overpotential). To enable such developments, we report here the free-energy reaction barriers and mechanistic pathways on the Cu(100) surface, which produces only CH4 (not C2H4 or CH3OH) in acid (pH 0). We predict a threshold potential for CH4 formation of -0.52 V, which compares well to experiments at low pH, -0.45 to -0.50 V. These quantum molecular dynamics simulations included ∼5 layers of explicit water at the water/electrode interface using enhanced sampling methodology to obtain the free energies. We find that that chemisorbed hydroxyl-methylene (CH-OH) is the key intermediate determining the selectivity for methane over methanol.

Plane-wave density functional theory investigation of adsorption of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene on Al-hydroxylated (0001) surface of (4 × 4) α-alumina

This article reports the results of the theoretical investigation of adsorption of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) on Al-hydroxylated (0001) surface of (4 × 4) α-alumina (α-Al2O3) using plane-wave Density Functional Theory. Sixteen water molecules were used to hydroxylate the alumina surface. The Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof functional and the recently developed van der Waals functional (vdW-DF2) were used. The interaction of electron with core was accounted using the Vanderbilt ultrasoft pseudopotentials. It was found that hydroxylation has significant influence on the geometry of alumina and such changes are prominent up to few layers from the surface. Particularly, due to the Al-hydroxylation the oxygen layers are decomposed into sublayers and such partitioning becomes progressively weaker for interior layers. Moreover, the nature of TNT adsorption interaction is changed from covalent type on the pristine alumina surface to hydrogen-bonding interaction on the Al-hydroxylated alumina surface. TNT in parallel orientation forms several hydrogen bonds compared to that in the perpendicular orientation with hydroxyl groups of the Al-hydroxylated alumina surface. Therefore, the parallel orientation will be present in the adsorption of TNT on Al-hydroxylated (0001) surface of α-alumina. Further, the vdW-DF2 van der Waals functional was found to be most suitable and should be used for such surface adsorption investigation.

Treatment taxonomy for rehabilitation: past, present, and prospects

The idea of constructing a taxonomy of rehabilitation interventions has been around for quite some time, but other than small and mostly ad hoc efforts, not much progress has been made, in spite of articulate pleas by some well-respected clinician scholars. In this article, treatment taxonomies used in health care, and in rehabilitation specifically, are selectively reviewed, with a focus on the need to base a rehabilitation treatment taxonomy (RTT) on the "active ingredients" of treatments and their link to patient/client deficits/problems that are targeted in therapy. This is followed by a description of what we see as a fruitful approach to the development of an RTT that crosses disciplines, settings, and patient diagnoses, and a discussion of the potential uses in and benefits of a well-developed RTT for clinical service, research, education, and service administration.