First-principles calculations suggested that graphene decorated with benzene could exhibit interesting magnetic properties, which might potentially lead to spin-valve materials.15 The me
Trang 1Nanostructures of C 60 MetalGraphene (Metal = Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, or Ni): A Spin-Polarized Density Functional Theory Study
Hung M Le,*,†,‡ Hajime Hirao,*,† Yoshiyuki Kawazoe,§,∥ and Duc Nguyen-Manh⊥
†Division of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University,
21 Nanyang Link, Singapore 637371, Singapore
‡Faculty of Materials Science, University of Science, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
§New Industry Creation Hatchery Centre, Tohoku University, 6-6-4, Aramaki, Aoba, Sendai, 980-8579, Japan
∥Institute of Thermophysics, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1, Lavyrentyev Avenue, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia
⊥Theory and Modeling Department, Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Abingdon, OX14 3DB, United Kingdom
*S Supporting Information
ABSTRACT: We used plane-wave density functional theory (DFT) to investigate the
properties of C60Mgraphene (C60MG) nanostructures (M = Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, or
Ni) The calculated binding energies suggested that C60could be mounted on a metal−
graphene surface with good bonding stability The high-spin C60CrG nanostructure
was found to be more stable than the previously reported low-spin configuration Also,
C60Ti was found to stand symmetrically upright on the graphene surface, while in the
remaining four cases, the orientation of C60M in the C60MG nanostructures were
bent, and the geometry of each structure is somewhat different, depending on the identity
of the bridging metal atom The large geometric distortion of C60M in the tilted C60
MG nanostructures (with Cr, Fe, Mn, and Ni) is attributed to the spin polarization in
the 3d orbitals and dispersion interactions between graphene and C60 Additional DFT
calculations on smaller C60Mbenzene complexes with atomic-orbital (AO) basis sets
provided consistent results on structural geometry and numbers of unpaired electrons
The DFT calculations using AO basis sets suggested that the C60−M unit was flexible
with respect to the bending motion The knowledge of metal-dependent geometric differences derived in this study may be useful
in designing nanostructures for spintronic and electronic applications
1 INTRODUCTION
Buckminsterfullerene (C60), a spherical molecule that wasfirst
discovered by Kroto and co-workers,1 has a large surface area
arising from the spherical molecular shape This feature has
proven useful in the adsorption of small metal clusters2,3and
the catalysis of small molecules.4−7 For example, Birkett et al
suggested that the adsorption of a Ni/Co layer on C60 would
produce a “plausible” catalyst for the carbon nanotube
synthesis.4 Braun et al proposed an experimental procedure
to attach amorphous Ru on C60and applied it to the catalysis of
the hydrogenation processes of CO and 2-cyclohexenone.5,6
C60 itself was also shown to act as a catalyst in the
hydrogenation of nitro groups.7
If such attractive catalytic effects of C60 are to be further
exploited for heterogeneous catalysis, then a stable hosting
nanostructure may have to be established, so that the C60
-attached metal nanoparticles can be recovered and utilized
repeatedly This may be accomplished, for example, by
steadying C60 on the surface of a graphene monolayer8 with
bridging metal atom(s).9Our recent calculations demonstrated
that such nanostructures are indeed capable of hosting metal
nanoparticles on C60, and that resultant complexes should act as active catalysts for chemical reactions (such as OO bond activation).9
In addition to its potential roles in catalysis, the significance
of C60in hydrogen storage has been appreciated The coating of
C60with Sc and Ti was reported to elevate the binding energy
of hydrogen, which led to a high H2-storage capacity (up to 8
wt %).10 However, it was noted in the same study that transition metals tended to cluster on the C60surface, thereby compromising the effectiveness of hydrogen storage Alkali metals such as Li and Na, however, do not cluster on C60 On the basis of the results obtained fromfirst-principles studies, it was suggested that C60Li12 was able to capture up to 60 H2 molecules,11 while C60Na8 could store 48 H2 molecules.12 Furthermore, Teprovich et al.13 experimentally demonstrated the hydrogen storage on C60Lix, achieving the H2-storage capacity up to 5 wt % Even for such hydrogen storage
pubs.acs.org/JPCC
21057 | J Phys Chem C 2014, 118, 21057−21065
Trang 2purposes, steadying C60on a graphene sheet or other
carbon-based nanomaterials might be beneficial
When ligands are attached to a graphene monolayer via
transition-metal atoms,14 interesting electronic and magnetic
behaviors are elicited that could be used in high-mobility
electronic transistors or spintronic and memory devices
First-principles calculations suggested that graphene decorated with
benzene could exhibit interesting magnetic properties, which
might potentially lead to spin-valve materials.15 The
metal-bridging strategy is also useful in interconnecting single-walled
carbon nanotubes (SWNTs).16 The bis-hexahapto linkages in
SWNT−metal complexes were found to reduce the
inter-nanotube junction resistance.14,17 Assuming that C60 is the
ligand, we previously examined C60CrG, which involves
donor−acceptor interactions: 3d orbitals (acceptors) of Cr and
2pz orbitals (donors) of graphene establish coordination
bonding between aromatic honeycomb rings and the metal,
while C60 is capable of receiving electrons from the metal
atom.9 According to the classification schemes of metal−
graphene interactions discussed by Sarkar et al.,14C60CrG
could be regarded as a covalent chemisorption case because of
the high binding energy (>2.0 eV) It should be noted that Cr is
not the only transition-metal atom that has vacancy in the 3d
shells, and therefore it may also be possible to construct C60
MG using other 3d transition metals, e.g., Ti, Mn, Fe, and Ni,
as bridging atoms, which may allow magnetism to emerge in
the resultant nanostructures.18 In this paper, we report a
theoretical study of the C60MG nanostructure containing
Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, or Ni as M Moreover, the interplay among the
bonding orientation, spin polarization, and magnetic properties
is discussed in the light of evidence obtained from electronic
structure calculations It was shown in a previous theoretical
work19 that transition metal atoms could attach to different
binding sites (hollow (H6), bridge, top) of graphene In
particular, the energy differences in various binding schemes of
Cr and Mn were insignificant However, we only consider the
hollow-binding scheme between transition metal atoms and
graphene in the current study
2 COMPUTATIONAL DETAILS
2.1 Structural Optimizations Using Plane-Wave
Calculations Our model contained a total of 115 atoms in
a hexagonal unit cell A periodic graphene sheet consisting of 54
C atoms in the unit cell (with the a and b lattice parameters of
12.8 Å and c lattice parameter greater than 16.2 Å) was
decorated with C60 via a bridging transition-metal atom The
distance between two C60 units due to periodicity was 5.9 Å
Also, by adopting such a large c axis, it was ensured the vacuum
distance between layers in the z direction to be at least 6.9 Å
The geometry was relaxed in terms of unit-cell axes (with a
constant volume) and atomic positions using density functional
theory (DFT) methods20,21 implemented in the Quantum
Espresso (QE) program.22 The Perdew
−Burke−Ernzer-hof23−25 (PBE) functional within the generalized gradient
approximation was employed to describe the
exchange-correlation energy, in combination with the Vanderbilt ultrasoft
pseudopotentials26,27 for C and transition metal atoms For
two-dimensional slab calculations, a k-point mesh of (6× 6 ×
1) was chosen to represent the Brillouin zone, while a
kinetic-energy cutoff of 45 Ry was used for the plane-wave expansion
The semiempirical dispersion correction scheme was used to
include the nonbonding interaction between C60 and
graphene.28,29 In each structural optimization, the initial
magnetization of the metal atom was varied to ensure that the calculations yielded the most stable spin states (magnetic moment) of the nanostructures, and the Gaussian smearing was employed with a small smearing width of 0.002 Ry In order to obtain equilibrium structures with good accuracy, the energy convergence criteria were set as 10−6 Ry To reduce the computational cost, the scan calculations were performed with
a smearing width of 0.03 Ry
Once convergence of geometry optimization was attained, the binding stability could be evaluated using the following equations:
EC Mbinding60 G EG EC M EC M G
where EMG, EC60, EG, and EC60Mdenote the total energies of an optimized metal-adsorbed graphene system, C60, pure graphene supercell containing 54 C atoms, and C60M, respectively;
EC60MG represents the total energy of the complex nanostructure ECbinding60MG expresses the binding of C60 on a metal−graphene surface, while ECbinding60 MGrepresents the binding
of an MC60 complex on graphene
2.2 Localized Atomic-Orbital-Basis Calculations We also carried out localized atomic-orbital-basis calculations for the similar structures using the Amsterdam Density Functional (ADF)30 and Gaussian 09 (G09)31 packages for validation purposes In these calculations, we considered the isolated gas-phase models of C60Mbenzene, which were assumed to bear much resemblance to the C60MG nanostructures Previously, a study of first- and second-row transition-metal binding to benzene was reported by Bauschlicher et al.32The PBE exchange-correlation functional23−25 was employed to optimize the C60Mbenzene structures with constrained spin states The triple-ζ-polarized (TZP) Slater-type basis set33−35with large-core pseudopotential was employed in ADF calculations, while the 6-31G* basis set (for C and H)36,37
and the SDD effective core potential basis set (for metal) were used
in G09 calculations.38,39In the G09 calculation set, calculations using Grimme’s dispersion correction with Becke−Johnson damping (GD3BJ) were also included,40 while we performed two sets of calculations in ADF with and without the dispersion
effect Upon convergence, the binding energy of each structure
is calculated based on the G09 or ADF results as follows:
ECbindingM benzene EM benzene EC EC M benzene
(3) where EMbenzenedenotes the total“bonding energy” (in ADF)
or total energy (in G09) of a metal−benzene structure in its most stable spin state According to the G09 and ADF results, the most stable spin states of Crbenzene, Mnbenzene, and
Febenzene are septet,41
sextet, and triplet, respectively (see Table S1, Supporting Information (SI)) EC60 and EC60MG represent the total bonding energies of C60 and the C60−M− benzene complexes, respectively
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1 Structural Optimization of C60MG We previously reported an upright (symmetric) structure of
C60CrG (Figure 1(b)) with a low spin polarization, which was obtained from geometry optimization using an
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Trang 3upright initial geometry.9As shown in Figure 1(a), we explored
a wider area of the potential energy surface for C60CrG,
and found that there are two distinct types of curves (denoted
as“Scan 1” and “Scan 2”) Because of the difficulty in defining
internal coordinates in QE calculations, the scan calculations
were performed by imposing constraints tofix the z coordinates
of Cr and six lowest-lying C atoms of C60 (the same z
coordinates were initially assigned to these C atoms), while the
x,y coordinates of those atoms and the x,y,z coordinates of
other atoms are relaxed From the scan and geometry
optimization calculations, we found a new equilibrium structure
as shown in Figure 1(c), which was more stable than the
previous structure and had a larger spin polarization term In
the newly obtained nanostructure, a unique bonding geometry
was observed, in which only two C atoms of C60participated in
the coordination bonding with Cr Moreover, the C60Cr axis
was highly tilted as can be seen from a tilt angle, which was
defined as the angle between the bisector of the two MC
vectors and the approximate normal vector of the graphene
plane
In the equilibrium structure of C60MnG that had a large
magnetic moment, Mn was bound to six C atoms in graphene
and two C atoms in C60 as in the case of most stable C60
CrG (see Figure 2(a)) As for the C60FeG
nanostruc-ture, in its most stable form, the equilibrium geometry was
similar to that of the high-spin C60CrG and C60MnG
nanostructures; however, there was a clear difference in the
orientation of C60 As shown in Figures 1(c) and 2(a), the two
C atoms in the CrC/MnC bonds have nearly the same z
coordinate, while the plane defined by two FeC bonds is
almost perpendicular to the graphene sheet, and one C atom
has a larger z coordinate than the other (Figure 2(b)) The Fe
atom fully interacts with a honeycomb ring of graphene,
whereas it tends to reduce coordination interactions with C60,
to have only two FeC linkages To describe the distortion of
C60 in C60FeG, we again define a tilt angle as shown in Figure 2(b) The behavior of C60on NiG, as shown in Figure 2(d), was somewhat similar to that in the case of C60FeG, but C60 seemed to be less tilted on Ni According to our equilibrium geometries obtained from plane-wave DFT calculations, in the most stable C60CrG, C60MnG,
C60FeG, and C60NiG nanostructures, the C60M unit was tilted when it was mounted on the metal; these structures had tilt angles of 36.3°, 30.5°, 28.6°, and 15.1°, respectively In the C60TiG structure (Figure 2(c)), the orientation of C60was symmetrically upright like the structure
of low-spin C60CrG
3.2 Spin-Polarized Electronic Structures and Bonding Analyses In all cases, the binding energies of the C60MG structures given by eq 1 are positive, indicating good stabilization and strong chemisorption (rather than physisorp-tion with small binding energies) of C60 on the metal− graphene complex The calculated binding energies of C60
CrG, C60MnG, and C60FeG and the correspond-ing magnetic moments are summarized in Table 1 Due to the fact that ECbinding60MG is always greater than the corresponding
ECbinding60M−G, we can state that attaching C60on a metal−graphene surface should be more favorable than attaching a C60−metal complex on graphene Even though C60M is highly tilted in high-spin C60MG nanostructures and the metal atoms form coordination bonds with only two C atoms, allfive metals turn out to be good bridging atoms that steady C60 on the graphene monolayer effectively The binding energy of the newly observed C60CrG nanostructure (2.95 eV) is indeed
Figure 1 (a) Energy profiles for the dissociation of C 60 from CrG,
obtained from energy scan calculations The CrC 60 distance is the
distance in the z direction between Cr and six lowest C atoms (b) The
previously obtained upright C 60 CrG structure 9 (c) The most
stable C 60 CrG structure, in which the C 60 tilt angle is defined as
the angle between the bisector of two CrC bonds (b⃗) and vector n⃗
connecting the center of mass of six nearest C atoms on graphene to
the metal atom.
Figure 2 Equilibrium (a) C60MnG, (b) C 60 FeG, (c) C 60 TiG, and (d) C 60 NiG structures C 60 is upright on Ti by forming hexahapto bonds, while tilted in the other three cases The C60 tilt angle is defined as the angle between the bisector of two MC bonds (b⃗) and vector n ⃗ connecting the center of mass of six nearest C atoms on graphene to the metal atom.
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Trang 40.59 eV larger than that of the low-spin structure reported in a
previous study.9In Table 1, we also present the total magnetic
moment exhibited by each structure when DFT calculations
were executed with a smearing width of 0.002 Ry
To verify the interesting geometric trends observed for C60
MG in plane-wave calculations, we performed structural
optimizations for the C60Mbenzene models with the PBE
functionals and atomic-orbital basis sets, using ADF and G09
software According to the results obtained from the PBE/TZP
calculations without dispersion effects using ADF and the PBE/
(SDD,6-31G*) calculations with dispersion corrections using
G09, the most stable spin states of C60Crbenzene, C60
Mnbenzene, C60Febenzene, C60Tibenzene, and
C60Nibenzene were quintet, quartet, triplet, singlet, and
singlet, respectively By contrast, the PBE/TZP calculations
with the dispersion effect using ADF predicted that singlet
C60Crbenzene was more stable than the quintet structure
(see the summary of binding energies of C60Mbenzene
structures in Table 1) These results indicate that the
singlet-quintet spin-state splitting is sensitive to the method employed
In fact, we examined several different methods and found that
the PBE method tends to give the singlet ground state,
especially when effective core potential is not used (SI Table
S2) The calculated binding energies from both ADF without
dispersion effects and G09 with dispersion effects suggested
that quintet C60Crbenzene (S = 2) was the most stable
structure with a binding energy of 1.96 eV (ADF) or 2.16 eV
(G09), while the closest metastable configuration of C60
Crbenzene (singlet (S = 0), with no geometry distortion)
had a slightly lower binding energy (1.95 eV given by ADF
without dispersion effects and 2.14 eV given by G09) With the
inclusion of dispersion effects in ADF, the binding energy of
quintet C60Crbenzene was raised by 0.15 eV; however, the
empirical corrections increased the binding energy of singlet
C60Crbenzene by 0.20 eV, thus making it the ground state
instead With the inclusion of dispersion effects in ADF, the
binding energies of C60Mnbenzene, C60Febenzene,
C60Tibenzene, and C60Nibenzene were also raised by
0.19−0.39 eV In general, it can be observed that with
dispersion effects included, the binding energies obtained from
ADF calculations were closer to the corresponding binding
energies given by G09 calculations Overall, the binding energy
trend obtained from atomic-orbital calculations is not very
different from that obtained from QE calculations In terms of
geometry, all QE, ADF, and G09 calculations predicted that Cr,
Mn, Fe, and Ni interacted with C60via two C atoms in the most
stable ground states Meanwhile, Ti made a low-spin
configuration, in which the metal atom formed bis-hexahapto
bonds with both graphene and C60, which is very similar to the
case of the low-spin Cr complex
There were small geometric differences between the different models of the Ni and high-spin Cr complex Whereas the QE calculation predicted that in C60CrG, C60Cr was highly tilted with an angle of 36.3°, it was observed from the ADF-optimized quintet C60Crbenzene structure that the distortion of C60Cr was less severe (4.4−4.5°) However, the G09-optimized structure was highly distorted (with a tilt angle of 30.4° according to the definition introduced in Figure 1) The much smaller angles obtained in the ADF calculations may be due to the use of large cores In the Ni cases, whereas the results from AO calculations indicated that C60 was not tilted on benzeneNi, QE calculations indicated that C60was tilted on NiG with an angle of 15.1° Despite these
differences, overall, the QE plane-wave calculations and the ADF calculations gave more or less consistent trends in the distorting geometry of C60MG
For validation purposes, we carried out four additional sets of atomic-orbital DFT calculations in G09 using the hybrid B3LYP functional42 and 6-31G* basis set with/without the dispersion effect, PBE/(SDD,6-31G*) and PBE/6-31G* with-out considering the dispersion effect For convenience, the relative total energies and tilt angles of all Cr, Mn, Fe, Ti, and
Ni structures obtained from atomic-orbital DFT calculations are given in Tables S2, S3, S4, S5, and S6, respectively (SI) The
difference between PBE and B3LYP calculations in terms of geometry distortions and relative energies can be clearly observed in the Cr, Mn, and Fe cases Quintet C60Cr benzene was highly tilted according to the PBE/(SDD,6-31G*) calculations without dispersion effects (19.4°) When the dispersion correction was included, C60 approached closer to benzene and made a larger tilting angle (30.5°) A small distortion of C60Cr was also reported by B3LYP/6-31G* calculations, but when the dispersion correction term was introduced, C60 drew closer to benzene, and thus caused an increase in the tilt angle (25.0°) In the last calculation set, PBE/6-31G* calculations indicated a large distortion (29.5°) in quintet C60Crbenzene; however, this calculation (at the PBE/TZP level with dispersion effects using ADF) suggested that singlet was more stable than quintet, while the other calculation sets showed that the quintet state was more stable Also, B3LYP calculations tended to give larger energy differences of 0.60−0.64 eV and favor the high spin state, whereas the PBE/(SDD,6-31G*) with/without dispersion
effects indicated slight distinctions in relative energy between the two states (0.01−0.04 eV)
In the case of C60Mnbenzene, the PBE calculations gave large tilt angles (13.7°−18.5°) of the quartet structure, and the relative energy of the excited doublet state compared to the quartet ground state fell in the range of 0.24−0.63 eV Both B3LYP calculations with and without dispersion effects,
Table 1 Binding Energies and Magnetic Moments (MT) of the C60MG Structures Given by Plane-Wave Calculations, Binding Energies and Multiplicity of C60MBenzene Given by PBE/TZP with and without Dispersion Corrections in ADF and PBE/(SDD,6-31G*) with Dispersion Corrections in G09
M
binding energy (eV)
MT( μB/cell) multiplicity
ECbinding60−MG ECbinding60M−G ADF (without dispersion) ADF (with dispersion) G09
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Trang 5however, predicted that the tilt angles were very small (0.1°)
and the energy difference between the two states was much
larger (>1.1 eV) It should also be noted that the geometry of
C60Mnbenzene was similar to QE-calculated C60FeG
in Figure 2(b); thus, there was a difference in the orientation of
C60between C60Mnbenzene and C60MnG Again, we
noted that the relative energies between triplet ground state
and excited singlet state of C60Febenzene were higher
(0.58−0.65 eV) according to the hybrid B3LYP calculations,
while PBE gave smaller energy differences (0.24−0.44 eV) The
tilt angle of triplet C60Febenzene was predicted to vary
from 16.8° to 23.3° (see Table S4, SI) Using small C60M
benzene, we also checked how energy changes with respect to
the change in the position of C60(SI Figures S10−S12) It was
found that the stability of the system changed significantly
when C60 dissociated from M−benzene However, the energy
change was not significant when the angle of C60M was
changed, indicating that the C60MG are relatively flexible
with respect to the bending motion In its most stable form, C60
seemed to stand upright on Ni−benzene via two Ni−C
interactions The tilt angle in all cases were very small (0.0−
0.7°) This is different from the geometry observed in C60
NiG (with a tilt angle of 15.1°), which might be a result of
strong dispersion interactions between C60 and graphene All
PBE and B3LYP calculations predicted that the energy
difference between the singlet ground-state and triplet excited
state was in the range of 1.21−1.32 eV In the most stable
configuration of C60Tibenzene (singlet), C60 was seen to
stand symmetrically upright on Ti, similar to the singlet C60
Crbenzene case, which was consistent with the structure of
C60TiG given by QE calculations In terms of energy, all
PBE calculations predicted a more significant energy difference
between the singlet ground-state and triplet excited state
(0.29−0.55 eV), while the two B3LYP calculation sets
predicted much smaller energy differences (0.01−0.03 eV)
To gain a deeper understanding of such distortion behavior
of C60, we analyzed the molecular orbital diagrams obtained
from ADF AO calculations without the dispersion effect As
summarized in Table 2, the Mulliken charge distribution
analysis from PBE/TZP (ADF) and PBE/(SDD,6-31G*)
(G09) showed that C60 had a negative charge in the C60
Mbenzene complex in all cases, indicating that M−benzene
donated electrons to C60 In the most stable form, C60Cr
benzene had a spin multiplicity of quintet (four unpaired
electrons) The singlet C60Crbenzene was less stable (with
no unpaired electrons as shown in Figure 3(b)) In a previous
study, Sahnoun and Mijoule reported that bis(benzene)
chromium adopted the singlet spin state in its most stable
form.41 Unlike benzene, the unique spherical shape of C60
allows its rolling on Cr to obtain a more stable geometric
configuration having a tilted CrC60 moiety The orbital
diagram in Figure 3(a) shows that only the 3dyz-type orbital is doubly occupied, and this orbital should be mainly used for the electron donation to C60(Figure S1, SI) Indeed, we observed above that the two C atoms in the CrC bonds had nearly the same z coordinate in C60CrG (Figure 1(c)) However, the other d orbitals are singly occupied, and thus a hexahapto coordination of C60will result in large repulsion between these singly occupied d orbitals (especially 3dxz and 3dz2) and occupied orbitals of C60 To alleviate this repulsion, C60changes its geometry to a more tilted one (Figure 1(c)) In terms of the electronic structure, the overall multiplicity (quintet) in ADF calculations is consistent with the relatively large total magnetic moment obtained by QE calculations (4.06μB/cell as shown in Table 1)
In the low-spin C60Crbenzene (Figure 3(b)), both the 3dxz and 3dyz orbitals are unoccupied, while 3dz2, 3dxy, and 3dx2
−y 2subshells are doubly occupied The 3dz2-type orbital will
be used for the electron donation to C60 Furthermore, the empty Cr 3dxz and 3dyz subshells can establish two pairs of donor−acceptor interactions effectively with highest-occupied orbitals of C60 These charge-transfer interactions allow the low-spin C60Crbenzene complex to have an upright geometry, and the relatively small charge of C60(−0.32 given
by ADF and−0.15 given by G09 as reported in Table 2) results from the back-donation effect
The most stable spin multiplicities of C60Mnbenzene and C60Febenzene were predicted as quartet (S=3/2) and triplet (S = 1), respectively Quartet C60Mnbenzene had three unpaired electrons that occupied the 3dxy, 3dz2, and 3dyz, while the 3dxz and 3dx2
−y 2 orbitals were doubly occupied, as shown in the energy diagram in Figure 4(a) In the case of
C60Febenzene, the spin state was triplet, and both 3dxz
and 3dyz were singly occupied (Figure 4(b)) The single
Table 2 Mulliken Charges and Spin Densities (in Parentheses) of Benzene, M, and C60Given by PBE/TZP (ADF) and PBE/ (SDD,6-31G*) with GD3BJ Correction (G09) for Four BenzeneMC60Complexes
PBE/TZP without dispersion corrections (ADF) PBE/(SDD,6-31G *) with dispersion corrections (G09)
benzene CrC 60 (quintet) 0.33 (0.19) 0.51 (4.18) −0.84 (−0.37) 0.31 (0.14) 0.30 (4.15) −0.61 (−0.29) benzene CrC 60 (singlet) 0.30 (0.00) 0.02 (0.00) −0.32 (0.00) 0.48 (0.00) −0.33 (0.00) −0.15 (0.00) benzene MnC 60 (quartet) 0.21 ( −0.17) 0.38 (3.45) −0.59 (−0.28) 0.29 ( −0.19) 0.21 (3.43) −0.51 (−0.24) benzeneFeC 60 (triplet) 0.21 (−0.14) 0.24 (2.21) −0.45 (−0.07) 0.38 (−0.17) −0.03 (2.23) −0.35 (−0.06) benzene Ti−C 60 (singlet) 0.19 (0.00) 0.44 (0.00) −0.63 (0.00) 0.28 (0.00) 0.20 (0.00) −0.48 (0.00) benzene Ni−C 60 (singlet) 0.25 (0.00) 0.16 (0.00) −0.41 (0.00) 0.47 (0.00) −0.14 (0.00) −0.32 (0.00)
Figure 3 Energy diagrams of the Cr 3d shells in (a) the quintet (most stable) and (b) singlet (less stable) C 60 Crbenzene structures given by PBE/TZP without dispersion corrections in ADF In the quintet structure, 3d yz is doubly occupied, while the other 3d shells are singly occupied In the singlet state, 3d z2, 3d xy , and 3d x2−y 2 are doubly occupied, whereas 3d xz and 3d yz are unoccupied.
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Trang 6occupation of each of these d orbitals will again cause repulsion
against the occupied orbitals of C60, thus resulting in a severe
distortion of the C60Fe axis
Both C60Tibenzene and C60Nibenzene were
observed to establish singlet multiplicities (no unpaired
electrons) even though the C60M bonding configurations
were completely different (Ti formed hexahapto bonds with
C60 while Ni was bound to two C atoms in C60) Because of
having hexahapto bonds with C60, the Mulliken charge on Ti
(0.44 as given by ADF or 0.20 as given by G09) was more
positive than the charge of Ni (0.16 as given by ADF, or even
−0.14 as given by G09) As shown in the molecular orbital
energy diagram of C60Tibenzene (Figure 5(a)), the 3dxy
and 3dx2
−y 2 orbitals were doubly occupied at the same energy
levels, and the remaining 3d-like subshells were unoccupied In
the C60Nibenzene case, all five 3d-like orbitals are fully
occupied (Figure 5(b))
The number of unpaired electrons in each C60M
benzene case could also be explained by adopting the
hybrid-orbital electron occupation schemes for metal−ligand
com-plexes proposed by Hoffmann.43
The six-membered ring of benzene bound to M could be considered as three ligands (L3),
while the C60-edge connection could be considered as another
ligand Therefore, C60Mnbenzene, C60Febenzene,
C60Nibenzene, and high-spin C60Crbenzene could
be regarded as ML4 structures, which had three t2g and two
other hybrid bonding orbitals (a1and b2) Indeed, the d8ML4
(i.e., C60Febenzene) structure was “isolobal” to carbine and had two unpaired electrons occupying a1 and b2 levels (Figure 6).43 For Cr and Mn (d6, d7 respectively), more
electrons would be withdrawn from t2g However, for Ni (d10), two additional electrons should be added to complete the a1 and b2orbitals and a close-shell configuration was obtained As
a result, we observed the most stable spin states of quintet, quartet, and singlet for C60Crbenzene, C60Mn benzene, C60Nibenzene, respectively (also illustrated in Figure 6) C60Tibenzene, however, could be considered as
ML6 because Ti was bound to a honeycomb ring in C60 by hexahapto bonds (three additional ligands), which strongly preferred to to have a close-shell configuration (singlet)
In terms of magnetic alignments, spin-polarized QE calculations using plane-wave basis sets predicted that the most stable C60MnG exhibited a magnetic moment of 3.11μB/cell, whereas C60FeG gave a magnetic moment of 2.00μB/cell The magnetic moments of high-spin and low-spin
C60CrG nanostructures were 4.06 and 0.00 μB/cell, respectively Also, the total magnetic moments in both C60
TiG and C60NiG were found to vanish Those magnetic quantities are consistent with the spin states of C60M benzene given by ADF and G09 calculations In addition, the trend in the spin polarization of graphene and C60 was similar
to the trend in spin distribution of benzene and C60shown in Table 2
The magnetic behaviors of those investigated nanostructures can also be seen from the partial density of states (PDOS) of the 3d orbitals In the stable C60CrG structure (quintet) having a tilted geometry, high spin polarizations in the 3d orbitals were observed, which contribute significantly to the total magnetic moment of 4.06 μB/cell As shown in Figure 7(a),five 3d subshells are highly polarized with the dominance
of spin-up states Among five 3d subshells, 3dz2 is the most polarized orbital, while we also notice significant spin polarizations in 3dxz and 3dyz However, in metastable low-spin C60CrG with no geometry distortion of C60, no spin polarization was observed in the Cr 3d orbitals, i.e., the doubly occupied 3dz2, 3dxy, and 3dx2
−y 2and the nearly empty 3dxzand 3dyzorbitals as shown in Figure 7(b)
In C60MnG (MT = 3.11 μB/cell), high positive spin-polarization terms were found in all 3d subshells (see Figure 7(c)) Unlike atomic-orbital calculations in ADF, the plane-wave calculations indicated that both 3dxz and 3dyz had significant spin polarizations (0.71 and 0.56 μB, respectively), which resulted in a more severe distortion of MnC60in
high-Figure 4 Energy diagrams of the 3d shells in (a) quartet C60Mn
benzene and (b) triplet C60Febenzene given by PBE/TZP
without dispersion corrections in ADF In the Mn complex, 3dxzand
3dx2
−y 2 are fully occupied, while the other 3d orbitals are singly
occupied In the Fe structure, the single occupations of 3dxzand 3dyz
result in the distortion of C60.
Figure 5 Energy diagrams of the 3d shells in (a) singlet C60Ti
benzene and (b) singlet C60Nibenzene given by PBE/TZP
without dispersion corrections in ADF In the Ti complex, 3dxyand
3dx2
−y 2 are fully occupied, while the other 3d orbitals are unoccupied.
In the Ni structure, all 3d-like orbitals are fully occupied.
Figure 6 Electron occupations of the hybrid orbitals in the ML4 structures (quintet C60Crbenzene, C 60 Mnbenzene, C 60 Febenzene, and C 60 Nibenzene).
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Trang 7spin C60MnG compared to that in quartet C60−Mn−
benzene Similarly to the previous spin density of benzene
MnC60given by ADF and G09 calculations, the plane-wave
calculations predicted that both graphene and C60 gave
antiferromagnetic contributions In the Fe case, various degrees
of spin polarizations infive 3d subshells were found in C60
FeG (summarized in Table 3) The spin-up states in 3dxzand
3dyzare occupied to a large extent below the Fermi level, which
causes high spin polarization terms (≥0.67 μB), whereas the
other 3d orbitals are less polarized (≤0.3 μB) This trend is
consistent with the diagram in Figure 4(b) The PDOS of Ti 3d
(Figure 7(e)) also establishes good agreement with the
previous energy diagram of C60Tibenzene (Figure 5(a)),
because we could observe electron density of 3dxy and 3dx2
−y 2
below the Fermi level, while the other 3d subshells were almost
empty Figure 7(f) clearly demonstrates nonmagnetism, in
which allfive 3d subshells of Ni are doubly occupied This is
consistent with the predicted electron occupations from ADF
calculations in Figure 5(b) Because of nonpolarization, the
tilting angle of C60 in the Ni complex (15.1°) seemed less
significant than the other cases (Cr, Mn, Fe), which had larger
spin polarization terms in the 3d shells At this point, it could be
concluded that there was a correlation between metal 3d spin
polarizations and tilting behavior of C60 besides the effect of strong C60−graphene dispersion interactions
4 CONCLUSIONS
In summary, the plane-wave DFT calculations show that the
C60CrG, C60MnG, and C60FeG nanostructures
in their most stable ground states are severely tilted, while
C60NiG is less tilted Only two C atoms of C60 are involved in the bonding with the metal atom in these nanostructures However, C60is well balanced in the previously reported nonpolarized C60CrG and the new C60TiG nanostructures According to the calculated binding energies (>2 eV), all investigated nanostructures are stable at their most stable ground states Moreover, it was also shown that attaching
C60to a metal−graphene surface is more energetically favored than decorating graphene with C60−metal complexes The most stable spin states predicted by ADF and G09 calculations for
C60Crbenzene, C60Mnbenzene, C60Febenzene,
C60Tibenzene, and C60Nibenzene agreed very well with the magnetic moments predicted by plane-wave calculations Moreover, the distortion of the C60M axis in Cr-, Mn-, and Fe-involving structures was also found by ADF and G09 calculations with various extents The use of PBE/ TZP with large-electron−core pseudopotential with/without dispersion corrections in ADF predicted a smaller distortion of
C60Cr on benzene (4.5−4.5°), while the use of PBE/ (SDD,6-31G*) with GD3BJ corrections in G09 suggested a larger tilting angle (30.5°) The PDOS of 3d orbitals obtained from plane-wave calculations and the molecular energy diagrams obtained from ADF calculations jointly explained the number of unpaired electrons, thus yielded predictions of magnetic behavior of the investigated nanostructures A higher degree of C60tilting was found in C60CrG, C60MnG, and C60FeG (larger magnetic moments), while a low tilting of C60 was found in nonmagnetic C60NiG Therefore, besides the effect of dispersion interactions between
C60 and graphene, there is a correlation between the 3d spin polarizations and the tilting orientation of C60 on MG Indeed, such geometry distorting behavior encourages us to examine the possibility of using multiple metal atoms (rather than just one) to improve the binding between C60 and graphene
*S Supporting Information
ADF total bonding energies, G09 total energies, energy diagrams of benzene−M of different spin states, the XYZ coordinates of C60Crbenzene (quintet and singlet), C60
Mnbenzene, C60Febenzene, C60Tibenzene, C60
Nibenzene, and the crystal structures of C60CrG (high-spin and low-(high-spin), C60MnG, C60FeG, C60TiG,
C60NiG are all provided in one document file This material is available free of charge via the Internet at http:// pubs.acs.org
Corresponding Authors
*E-mail: hung.m.le@hotmail.com
*E-mail: hirao@ntu.edu.sg
Notes
The authors declare no competingfinancial interest
Figure 7 Spin-polarized PDOS of (a) Cr (high-spin), (b) Cr
(low-spin), (c) Mn, (d) Fe 3d, (e) Ti, and (f) Ni 3d orbitals in the C 60
MG nanostructures The Fermi level is positioned at 0 The electron
occupations shown in the PDOS are in good accordance with the
corresponding energy diagrams in Figures 3, 4, and 5.
Table 3 Spin Polarization Terms (μB) of the M 3d Orbitals,
Graphene, and C60in Four Investigated C60MG
Structures Obtained from Plane-Wave Calculations Usingσ
= 0.002 Ry
3dz2 3dxz 3dyz 3dx2
−y 2 3dxy G C60 Cr
(high spin)
0.93 0.68 0.59 0.78 0.87 0.24 −0.23
Cr
(low spin)
0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Mn 0.92 0.71 0.56 0.74 0.64 −0.30 −0.31
Fe 0.29 0.75 0.67 0.24 0.26 −0.19 −0.13
Ti 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Ni 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
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Trang 8■ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank the High-Performance Computing Centre at
Nanyang Technological University and the Institute for
Materials Research at Tohoku University (HS2014-18-01) for
computer resources H.H thanks a Nanyang Assistant
Professorship and an AcRF Tier 1 Grant (RG3/13)
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