Molecular Dynamics Studies of Nanotube Growth in a Carbon ARC

1994 ◽  
Vol 359 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Brabec ◽  
A. Maiti ◽  
C. Roland ◽  
J. Bernholc

ABSTRACTIt has been shown experimentally that the growth of carbon nanotubes in an arc discharge is open-ended. This is surprising, because dangling bonds at the end of open tubes make the closed tube geometry more favorable energetically. Recently, it has been proposed that the large electric fields present at the tip of tube is the critical factor that keeps the tube open. We have studied the effects of the electric field on the growth of the nanotubes via ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Surprisingly, it is found that the electric field cannot play a significant role in keeping the tubes open, implying that some other mechanism must be important. Extensive studies of the energetics and simulations of the growth of tubes were performed using a threebody Tersoff-Brenner potential. Our results show that there exists a critical diameter of ∼ 3 nm above which a defect-free growth of a straight tubule is possible. Narrower tubes stabilize configurations with adjacent pentagons that lead to tube-closure and termination of the growth. This explains the absence of tube narrower than 2.2 nm in arc discharge experiments.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Raiteri ◽  
Peter Kraus ◽  
Julian Gale

Molecular dynamics simulations of the liquid-liquid interface between water and 1,2-Dichloroethane in the presence of weak external electric fields.<div>The effect of the use of 3D periodic Ewald summation and the effect of the simulation setup are discussed.</div><div>A new simple geometric method for designing the simulation cell is proposed. This method was thoroughly tested shown that it mitigates any artefacts to the use of 3D Ewald summation with external electric field.</div>


2004 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Vegiri

The origin of the dramatic increase of the reorientational and structural relaxation rates of single water molecules in clusters of size N = 16, 32, and 64 at T = 200 K, under the influence of an external, relatively weak electric field (~0.5 107 V/cm) is examined through molecular dynamics simulations. The observed effect is attributed not to any profound structural changes, but to the increase of the size of the molecular cage. The response of water to an electric field in this range shows many similarities with the dynamics of water under low pressure. By referring to simulations and experiments from the literature, we show that in both cases the observed effects are dictated by a common mechanism.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Raiteri ◽  
Peter Kraus ◽  
Julian Gale

Molecular dynamics simulations of the liquid-liquid interface between water and 1,2-Dichloroethane in the presence of weak external electric fields.<div>The effect of the use of 3D periodic Ewald summation and the effect of the simulation setup are discussed.</div><div>A new simple geometric method for designing the simulation cell is proposed. This method was thoroughly tested shown that it mitigates any artefacts to the use of 3D Ewald summation with external electric field.</div>


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Marracino ◽  
Daniel Havelka ◽  
Jiří Průša ◽  
Micaela Liberti ◽  
Jack A. Tuszynski ◽  
...  

AbstractIntense pulsed electric fields are known to act at the cell membrane level and are already being exploited in biomedical and biotechnological applications. However, it is not clear if intra-cellular components such as cytoskeletal proteins could be directly influenced by electric pulses within biomedically-attainable parameters. If so, a molecular mechanism of action could be uncovered for therapeutic applications of such electric fields. To help clarify this question, we first identified that a tubulin heterodimer is a natural biological target for intense electric fields due to its exceptional electric properties and crucial roles played in cell division. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we then demonstrated that an intense - yet experimentally attainable - electric field of nanosecond duration can affect the β-tubulin’s C-terminus conformations and also influence local electrostatic properties at the GTPase as well as the binding sites of major tubulin drugs site. Our results suggest that intense nanosecond electric pulses could be used for physical modulation of microtubule dynamics. Since a nanosecond pulsed electric field can penetrate the tissues and cellular membranes due to its broadband spectrum, our results are also potentially significant for the development of novel therapeutic protocols.Author summaryα/β-tubulin heterodimers are the basic building blocks of microtubules, that form diverse cellular structures responsible for essential cell functions such as cell division and intracellular transport. The ability of tubulin protein to adopt distinct conformations contributes to control the architecture of microtubule networks, microtubule-associated proteins, and motor proteins; moreover, it regulates microtubule growth, shrinkage, and the transitions between these states. Previous recent molecular dynamics simulations demonstrated that the interaction of the tubulin protein macrodipole with external electric field modifies orientation and conformations of key loops involved in lateral contacts: as a result, the stability of microtubules can be modulated by such fields. In this study, we seek to exploit these findings by investigating the possibility of fine-tuning the dipolar properties of binding sites of major drugs, by means of the action of electric fields. This may open the way to control tubulin-drug interactions using electric fields, thus modulating and altering the biological functions relative to the molecular vectors of microtubule assembly or disassembly. The major finding of our study reveals that intense (> 20 MV/m) ultra-short (30 ns) electric fields induce changes in the major residues of selected binding sites in a field strength-dependent manner.


2016 ◽  
Vol 842 ◽  
pp. 453-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Winarto ◽  
Daisuke Takaiwa ◽  
Eiji Yamamoto ◽  
Kenji Yasuoka

Water confined in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) under the influence of an electric field has interesting properties that are potential for nanofluidic-based applications. With molecular dynamics simulations, this work shows that the electric field induces formation of ordered structures of water molecules in the CNTs. Formation of the ordered structures strengthens the electrostatic interaction between the water molecules. As a result, water strongly prefers to fill CNTs over methanol and it produces a separation effect. Interestingly, the separation effect with the electric field does not decrease for a wide range of CNT diameter.


Processes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pelin Su Bulutoglu ◽  
Conor Parks ◽  
Nandkishor K. Nere ◽  
Shailendra Bordawekar ◽  
Doraiswami Ramkrishna

Being able to control polymorphism of a crystal is of great importance to many industries, including the pharmaceutical industry, since the crystal’s structure determines significant physical properties of a material. While there are many conventional methods used to control the final crystal structure that comes out of a crystallization unit, these methods fail to go beyond a few known structures that are kinetically accessible. Recent studies have shown that externally applied fields have the potential to effectively control polymorphism and to extend the set of observable polymorphs that are not accessible through conventional methods. This computational study focuses on the application of high-intensity dc electric fields (e-fields) to induce solid-state transformation of glycine crystals to obtain new polymorphs that have not been observed via experiments. Through molecular dynamics simulations of solid-state α -, β -, and γ -glycine crystals, it has been shown that the new polymorphs sustain their structures within 125 ns after the electric field has been turned off. It was also demonstrated that strength and direction of the electric field and the initial structure of the crystal are parameters that affect the resulting polymorph. Our results showed that application of high-intensity dc electric fields on solid-state crystals can be an effective crystal structure control method for the exploration of new crystal structures of known materials and to extend the range of physical properties a material can have.


Nanoscale ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1886-1891 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qi-Lin Zhang ◽  
Rong-Yao Yang ◽  
Wei-Zhou Jiang ◽  
Zi-Qian Huang

Using molecular dynamics simulations, we demonstrate that the water channeling across single-walled carbon nanotubes can greatly be affected by the terahertz electric field through the resonant mechanisms induced by various vortical modes in a broad frequency range.


Soft Matter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia D. Gordievskaya ◽  
Elena Yu. Kramarenko

The conformational behavior of a single dipolar chain in a uniform electric field is investigated by molecular dynamics simulations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (19) ◽  
pp. 12384-12393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hassan Sabzyan ◽  
Maryam Kowsar

A nano-flow is induced by applying gigahertz rotating electric fields (EFs) of different strengths and frequencies on a carbon nanotorus filled with water molecules, using molecular dynamics simulations.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes P. Dürholt ◽  
Babak Farhadi Jahromi ◽  
Rochus Schmid

Recently the possibility of using electric fields as a further stimulus to trigger structural changes in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) has been investigated. In general, rotatable groups or other types of mechanical motion can be driven by electric fields. In this study we demonstrate how the electric response of MOFs can be tuned by adding rotatable dipolar linkers, generating a material that exhibits paralectric behavior in two dimensions and dielectric behavior in one dimension. The suitability of four different methods to compute the relative permittivity κ by means of molecular dynamics simulations was validated. The dependency of the permittivity on temperature T and dipole strength μ was determined. It was found that the herein investigated systems exhibit a high degree of tunability and substantially larger dielectric constants as expected for MOFs in general. The temperature dependency of κ obeys the Curie-Weiss law. In addition, the influence of dipolar linkers on the electric field induced breathing behavior was investigated. With increasing dipole moment, lower field strength are required to trigger the contraction. These investigations set the stage for an application of such systems as dielectric sensors, order-disorder ferroelectrics or any scenario where movable dipolar fragments respond to external electric fields.


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