Electronic Structure of Transition Metal Clusters, Actinide Complexes and Their Reactivities
This is a continuing DOE-BES funded project on transition metal and actinide containing species, aimed at the electronic structure and spectroscopy of transition metal and actinide containing species. While a long term connection of these species is to catalysis and environmental management of high-level nuclear wastes, the immediate relevance is directly to other DOE-BES funded experimental projects at DOE-National labs and universities. There are a number of ongoing gas-phase spectroscopic studies of these species at various places, and our computational work has been inspired by these experimental studies and we have also inspired other experimental and theoretical studies. Thus our studies have varied from spectroscopy of diatomic transition metal carbides to large complexes containing transition metals, and actinide complexes that are critical to the environment. In addition, we are continuing to make code enhancements and modernization of ALCHEMY II set of codes and its interface with relativistic configuration interaction (RCI). At present these codes can carry out multi-reference computations that included up to 60 million configurations and multiple states from each such CI expansion. ALCHEMY II codes have been modernized and converted to a variety of platforms such as Windows XP, and Linux. We have revamped the symbolic CI code to automate the MRSDCI technique so that the references are automatically chosen with a given cutoff from the CASSCF and thus we are doing accurate MRSDCI computations with 10,000 or larger reference space of configurations. The RCI code can also handle a large number of reference configurations, which include up to 10,000 reference configurations. Another major progress is in routinely including larger basis sets up to 5g functions in thee computations. Of course higher angular momenta functions can also be handled using Gaussian and other codes with other methods such as DFT, MP2, CCSD(T), etc. We have also calibrated our RECP methods with all-electron Douglas-Kroll relativistic methods. We have the capabilities for computing full CI extrapolations including spin-orbit effects and several one-electron properties and electron density maps including spin-orbit effects. We are continuously collaborating with several experimental groups around the country and at National Labs to carry out computational studies on the DOE-BES funded projects. The past work in the last 3 years was primarily motivated and driven by the concurrent or recent experimental studies on these systems. We were thus significantly benefited by coordinating our computational efforts with experimental studies. The interaction between theory and experiment has resulted in some unique and exciting opportunities. For example, for the very first time ever, the upper spin-orbit component of a heavy trimer such as Au{sub 3} was experimentally observed as a result of our accurate computational study on the upper electronic states of gold trimer. Likewise for the first time AuH{sub 2} could be observed and interpreted clearly due to our computed potential energy surfaces that revealed the existence of a large barrier to convert the isolated AuH{sub 2} back to Au and H{sub 2}. We have also worked on yet to be observed systems and have made predictions for future experiments. We have computed the spectroscopic and thermodynamic properties of transition metal carbides transition metal clusters and compared our electronic states to the anion photodetachment spectra of Lai Sheng Wang. Prof Mike Morse and coworkers(funded also by DOE-BES) and Prof Stimle and coworkers(also funded by DOE-BES) are working on the spectroscopic properties of transition metal carbides and nitrides. Our predictions on the excited states of transition metal clusters such as Hf{sub 3}, Nb{sub 2}{sup +} etc., have been confirmed experimentally by Prof. Lombardi and coworkers using resonance Raman spectroscopy. We have also been studying larger complexes critical to the environmental management of high-level nuclear wastes. In collaboration with experimental colleague Prof Hieno Nitsche (Berkeley) and Dr. Pat Allen (Livermore, EXAFS) we have studied the uranyl complexes with silicates and carbonates. It should be stressed that although our computed ionization potential of uranium oxide was in conflict with the existing experimental data at the time, a subsequent gas-phase experimental work by Prof Mike Haven and coworkers published as communication in JACS confirmed our computed result to within 0.1 eV. This provides considerable confidence that the computed results in large basis sets with highly-correlated wave functions have excellent accuracies and they have the capabilities to predict the excited states also with great accuracy. Computations of actinide complexes (Uranyl and plutonyl complexes) are critical to management of high-level nuclear wastes.
- Research Organization:
- University of Califronia Davis
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Office of Basic energy Sciences, Chemical and Geosciences Division, Funamental Interactions Branch
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-04ER15546
- OSTI ID:
- 959347
- Report Number(s):
- Final; TRN: US1000945
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
ACTINIDE COMPLEXES
ACTINIDES
CARBIDES
CONFIGURATION INTERACTION
ELECTRON DENSITY
ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE
EXCITED STATES
IONIZATION POTENTIAL
PLUTONYL COMPLEXES
POTENTIAL ENERGY
RADIOACTIVE WASTES
RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY
SPECTROSCOPY
THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES
TRANSITION ELEMENTS
URANIUM OXIDES
URANYL COMPLEXES
WAVE FUNCTIONS