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Đây là một bài báo khoa học về dây nano silic trong lĩnh vực nghiên cứu công nghệ nano dành cho những người nghiên cứu sâu về vật lý và khoa học vật liệu.Tài liệu có thể dùng tham khảo cho sinh viên các nghành vật lý và công nghệ có đam mê về khoa học

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A structural model of one-dimensional thin silica nanowires

Department of Physics and Materials Science, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Koloon, Hong Kong SAR, China

Received 27 June 2004; in final form 28 June 2004

Available online 31 July 2004

Abstract

We report a new structural model of silica molecular wire based on spiro union two-membered ring (SU-2MR) units As revealed

by density functional calculations, the SU-2MR wire is formed by parallel 2MRs bridged by oxygen atoms and is energetically more favorable, thermally more stable and chemically more reactive at the tip than the edge-sharing two-membered ring molecular chain proposed early The SU-2MR molecular chain would be considered as an appropriate structural model of one-dimensional thin (0.4 nm) silica nanowires

Ó 2004 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved

One-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials are being

inten-sively researched because of their great potentials in

mesoscopic physics and in nanodevices Silica (SiO2),

which is the important component in glass, catalyst,

Si-based microelectronic derives and optical fibers, is

an increasingly important candidate to form 1D

nano-materials Significant progresses have been made in

synthesizing silica nanowires with a variety of methods

[1–6] Recently, very long aligned silica nanowires with

thin diameters of 5–10 nm has been synthesized by Hu

et al [6] through thermal oxidation of silicon wafers

Theoretical investigation of atomic structures of 1D

quantum wires is fundamentally important for

under-standing their overall properties and growth mechanism

In contrast to the intensive study on silicon nanowires

[7,8], little has been done about silica nanowires in terms

of their geometric and electronic structures

When forming bulk crystal, silica is a

three-dimen-sional (3D) network of corner-sharing SiO4tetrahedra,

frequently six-membered rings (refer to an Si–O–Si–

O   ring containing six Si atoms) However, the smaller

four-, three-, and two-membered rings have also been

found to exist in the surface or interior of amorphous

and crystalline silica, as well as vitreous silica [9–22]

In particular, two-membered rings (2MRs) exists not only in silica-w at high temperature [15], but also in Si–O-plasma reactions [16] as well as in the condensa-tion of vicinal hydroxyls or the thermodynamic rear-rangement of the pure silica structure at the surfaces

of amorphous and crystalline silica at high temperature

[17–22] The structural diversity creates opportunities for ma-terials with designed structures and properties Recently, Bromley et al.[23]proposed a structural model of silica molecular chains based on the edge-sharing 2MR (ES-2MR) units They found that the chains are energetically less stable than the corresponding molecular rings for

n > 11 (n is the number of SiO2units)[23] Here, we pro-pose a new model of thin silica molecular chains based

on spiro union 2MR (SU-2MR) units, aiming at provid-ing insight into the growth of 1D silica nanowires by searching for the preponderant structures via quantum mechanical calculations

The insets of Fig 1 show representative configura-tions of the SU-2MR molecular chains, and the ES-2MR molecular chains and rings, respectively To retain the stoichiometry, the chains are terminated at either end by non-bridging oxygen (NBO) atoms Three other termination modes have also been considered for the

0009-2614/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.cplett.2004.07.041

* Corresponding author Fax: +852 2788 7830.

E-mail address: aprqz@cityu.edu.hk (R.Q Zhang).

www.elsevier.com/locate/cplett Chemical Physics Letters 394 (2004) 437–440

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SU-2MR chains However, they were found to be

ener-getically less favorable than the mode described in

Fig 1 Note that the SU-2MR chains consist of only

even-n SiO2units, unlike the ES-2MR chains which

con-tain either even-n SiO2 units or odd-n SiO2 units We

have performed geometric optimizations and molecular

dynamics simulations for SU-2MR molecular chains in

comparison with those of ES-2MR chains and rings,

for (SiO2)nwith size varying from n = 2 to 26, using

den-sity functional theories available in both SIESTA 1.3

[24–26]and GAUSSIAN 98[27]codes The SIESTA

geo-metric optimizations were first performed using the

Per-dew–Burke–ErnzerhofÕs [28] Generalized Gradient

Approximation (GGA) functional with the double-f

plus polarization orbital (DZP) And further Gaussian

calculations were carried out at the B3LYP/6-31G(d)

level of theory, which has been confirmed to be enough

accurate for describing silica systems[29]

The geometries of the two kinds of the silica chains

show their respective unique characteristics Firstly,

the shapes and mutual positions of basic 2MR rings

are different In ES-2MR chains, all of the Si atoms form

a line with the planar 2MRs perpendicular to each

other Whereas, in SU-2MR chains, the Si atoms divide

into two parallel arrays linked by the bridging oxygen

(BO) atoms Secondly, the SU-2MR chain is more

com-pact than the ES-2MR chain The former possesses

much larger radial size (0.4 nm) and thus is relatively

shorter than the latter at the same size Thirdly, we

found that the SU-2MR chains tend to be slightly

curved as n > 20 due to the poorer symmetry, while long

ES-2MR chains still keep their straight line

To evaluate the energetic stability of these chains, we

calculated their binding energies (BEs) per SiO unit as

shown inFig 1, which is defined as the energy necessary

to dissociate the cluster into SiO2monomers Note that this energy index is equivalent to the strain energy rela-tive to a-silica used in our previous work [30] Compar-ison with the ES-2MR chains [curve (b)], our SU-2MR chains are energetically less favorable for smaller sizes (n < 9) For example, the BE of the SU-2MR chain at

n = 6 is smaller than the corresponding ES-2MR chain

by 0.20 eV/SiO2 The larger stability for these small ES-2MR chains is related to their smaller fraction of NBOs However, this factor would become less impor-tant with the increase of chain length Instead, the in-trinsic internal strain on 2MRs for larger chains remain a crucial factor in stabilizing (SiO2)n chains SU-2MR chains are more rapidly stabilized with in-creasing n, due to both its relatively small number of 2MRs and the attendance of BO atoms As shown in

Fig 1, the energetic stability of the SU-2MR chains ex-ceeds those of ES-2MR chains and also rings as n > 8 It

is indicated that ES-2MR chains would be more favora-ble in the initial stage of the silica nanoparticle embryo However, longer silica nanowires prefer SU-2MR struc-tures A growth mode change from the ES-2MR chain could be expected at n 9 with growth direction change and an open up of the end 2MR to facilitate the fol-lowed SU-2MR growth

To further test the structural stability of these molec-ular chains, we performed density functional molecmolec-ular dynamics simulations using SIESTA for chains with dif-ferent sizes at several temperatures, i.e., 500, 1000, 1500,

2000 and 3000 K The simulation time step was chosen

to be 1 fs, and the relaxed steps was set to 1000 Atomic forces are calculated using the Hellmann–Feymann

the-Fig 2 HOMO–LUMO gaps of the silica molecular chains as a function of n for (a) SU-2MR chains, and (b) ES-2MR chains The insets show the isodensity surfaces of the HOMO and LUMO of the SU-2MR chain at n = 12.

Fig 1 Binding energy per SiO 2 unit as a function of the silica cluster

size for (a) the SU-2MR chains, (b) the ES-2MR chains, and (c) the

ES-2MR rings The insets show the geometries of the representative

clusters.

438 D.J Zhang, R.Q Zhang / Chemical Physics Letters 394 (2004) 437–440

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orem; NewtonÕs equations are integrated by means of

VerletÕs algorithm We found that all these chains retain

their initial connectivity throughout the whole

simula-tions even at 3000 K which is far higher than the

synthe-sis conditions envisaged (1000 K) It is indicated that

both ES-2MR and SU-2MR chains are extremely

ther-mally stable, and very resistant to collapse or rupture

Moreover, the thermal stability of these chains is not

sensitive to the cluster size, confirming their intrinsically

structural rationality

To examine their electronic properties and the

reac-tivity, we calculated the energy gaps between the highest

occupied molecular orbitals (HOMOs) and the lowest

unoccupied molecular orbitals (LUMOs) of these

mo-lecular chains As shown in Fig 2, the gaps for the

two kinds of molecular chains rapidly level off to a

con-stant, 6.45 eV for ES-2MR chains as n > 14, and 5.91 eV

for SU-2MR chains as n > 18 Both the HOMOs and

LUMOs of these chains highly localize at the ends of

the chains, making mainly these regions responsible

for their energy gaps As an example, the insets of

Fig 2show the isodensity surfaces of the HOMO and

LUMO states of the SU-2MR chain at n = 12,

respec-tively The energy gap is a signature of the chemical

re-activity of a system Compared to the ES-2MR chains,

the relatively smaller gaps of SU-2MR chains indicate

higher chemical reactivities, facilitating the continuous

growth of the chains Hence, the SU-2MR chain may

be a more reasonable growth model of 1D silica

nano-wires.Fig 3schematically illustrates the growth mecha-nisms [monomer mode (a) and dimer mode (b)] of the silica nanowires according to the present SU-2MR model, in which the most stable linear monomer and rhomb dimer are regarded as preferential growth precur-sors, respectively

The relative reactivity of these chains is also borne out by their ionization potentials (IP) We calculated their vertical IPs for several representative structures For example, the vertical IP of the ES-2MR chain at

n = 12 is 14.82 eV, and that for the SU-2MR chain at

n = 18 is 9.79 eV The high ionization potential facili-tates their separation as neutral species from other silica clusters in an ionizing environment[31]

In conclusion, we presented a new SU-2MR model of silica molecular chains It is proposed to be a more ap-propriate growth model of 1D silica nanowires because

of their higher energetic and thermal stabilities and chemical reactivity than those of ES-2MR chains pro-posed early by Bromley et al., as n > 8

Acknowledgements The work described in this Letter was supported by two grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [pro-ject No CityU 1011/01P; and pro[pro-ject No CityU 1033/ 00P]

Fig 3 Schematic illustrations of the silica nanowire growth in (a) a monomer growth mode, and (b) a dimer growth mode.

D.J Zhang, R.Q Zhang / Chemical Physics Letters 394 (2004) 437–440 439

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