scholarly journals Effects of temperatures on pressure-induced structural changes in amorphous Si: A molecular-dynamics study

10.29007/6kp3 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renji Mukuno ◽  
Manabu Ishimaru

The structural changes of amorphous silicon (a-Si) under compressive pressure were examined by molecular-dynamics simulations using the Tersoff interatomic potential. a-Si prepared by melt-quenching methods was pressurized up to 30 GPa under different temperatures (300K and 500K). The density of a-Si increased from 2.26 to 3.24 g/cm3 with pressure, suggesting the occurrence of the low-density to high-density amorphous phase transformation. This phase transformation occurred at the lower pressure with increasing the temperature because the activation barrier for amorphous-to-amorphous phase transformation could be exceeded by thermal energy. The coordination number increased with pressure and time, and it was saturated at different values depending on the pressure. This suggested the existence of different metastable atomic configurations in a-Si. Atomic pair-distribution functions and bond-angle distribution functions suggested that the short-range ordered structure of high-density a-Si is similar to the structure of the high-pressure phase of crystalline Si (β-tin and Imma structures).

2013 ◽  
Vol 683 ◽  
pp. 348-352
Author(s):  
J.H. Xia ◽  
Zheng Fu Cheng ◽  
Xu Yang Xiao

The structural transitions of Ag965clusters during two different quenching processes (Q1:1.0×1014K/s, Q2: 1.0×1012K/s) were studied using molecular dynamics simulations. This work gives the structure properties including the variations with temperature of pair-correlation function, bond-angle distribution function, bond pairs and bond orientational order parameters in both rapid quenching processes. Our results indicated that the liquid Ag965 was frozen into amorphous structure at 100 K under the quenching condition Q1. While the liquid Ag965transformed to hexagonal close-packed (hcp) phase at the temperature 100 K under the quenching condition Q2.These instructions give you basic guidelines for preparing papers for conference proceedings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miraslau L. Barabash ◽  
William A. T. Gibby ◽  
Carlo Guardiani ◽  
Alex Smolyanitsky ◽  
Dmitry G. Luchinsky ◽  
...  

AbstractIn order to permeate a nanopore, an ion must overcome a dehydration energy barrier caused by the redistribution of surrounding water molecules. The redistribution is inhomogeneous, anisotropic and strongly position-dependent, resulting in complex patterns that are routinely observed in molecular dynamics simulations. Here, we study the physical origin of these patterns and of how they can be predicted and controlled. We introduce an analytic model able to predict the patterns in a graphene nanopore in terms of experimentally accessible radial distribution functions, giving results that agree well with molecular dynamics simulations. The patterns are attributable to a complex interplay of ionic hydration shells with water layers adjacent to the graphene membrane and with the hydration cloud of the nanopore rim atoms, and we discuss ways of controlling them. Our findings pave the way to designing required transport properties into nanoionic devices by optimising the structure of the hydration patterns.


Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (15) ◽  
pp. 4326
Author(s):  
Pawel Goj ◽  
Aleksandra Wajda ◽  
Pawel Stoch

Iron-phosphate glasses, due to their properties, have many potential applications. One of the most promising seems to be nuclear waste immobilization. Radioactive 90Sr isotope is the main short-lived product of fission and, due to its high solubility, it can enter groundwater and pose a threat to the environment. On the other hand, Sr is an important element in hard tissue metabolic processes, and phosphate glasses containing Sr are considered bioactive. This study investigated the effect of SrO addition on a glass structure of nominal 30Fe2O3-70P2O5 chemical composition using classical molecular dynamics simulations. To describe the interaction between Sr-O ion pairs, new interatomic potential parameters of the Buckingham-type were developed and tested for crystalline compounds. The short-range structure of the simulated glasses is presented and is in agreement with previous experimental and theoretical studies. The simulations showed that an increase in SrO content in the glass led to phosphate network depolymerization. Analysis demonstrated that the non-network oxygen did not take part in the phosphate network depolymerization. Furthermore, strontium aggregation in the glass structure was observed to lead to the non-homogeneity of the glass network. It was demonstrated that Sr ions prefer to locate near to Fe(II), which may induce crystallization of strontium phosphates with divalent iron.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanos S Nomidis ◽  
Enrico Carlon ◽  
Stephan Gruber ◽  
John F Marko

Structural Maintenance of Chromosomes (SMC) protein complexes play essential roles in genome folding and organization across all domains of life. In order to determine how the activities of these large (about 50 nm) complexes are controlled by ATP binding and hydrolysis, we have developed a molecular dynamics (MD) model that realistically accounts for thermal conformational motions of SMC and DNA. The model SMCs make use of DNA flexibility and looping, together with an ATP-induced "power stroke", to capture and transport DNA segments, so as to robustly translocate along DNA. This process is sensitive to DNA tension: at low tension (about 0.1 pN), the model performs steps of roughly 60 nm size, while, at higher tension, a distinct inchworm-like translocation mode appears, with steps that depend on SMC arm flexibility. By permanently tethering DNA to an experimentally-observed additional binding site ("safety belt"), the same model performs loop extrusion. We find that the dependence of loop extrusion on DNA tension is remarkably different when DNA tension is fixed vs when DNA end points are fixed: Loop extrusion reversal occurs above 0.5 pN for fixed tension, while loop extrusion stalling without reversal occurs at about 2 pN for fixed end points. Our model quantitatively matches recent experimental results on condensin and cohesin, and makes a number of clear predictions. Finally we investigate how specific structural changes affect the SMC function, which is testable in experiments on varied or mutant SMCs.


Author(s):  
Keivan Esfarjani ◽  
Gang Chen ◽  
Asegun Henry

Based on first-principles density-functional calculations, we have developed and tested a force-field for silicon, which can be used for molecular dynamics simulations and the calculation of its thermal properties. This force field uses the exact Taylor expansion of the total energy about the equilibrium positions up to 4th order. In this sense, it becomes systematically exact for small enough displacements, and can reproduce the thermodynamic properties of Si with high fidelity. Having the harmonic force constants, one can easily calculate the phonon spectrum of this system. The cubic force constants, on the other hand, will allow us to compute phonon lifetimes and scattering rates. Results on equilibrium Green-Kubo molecular dynamics simulations of thermal conductivity as well as an alternative calculation of the latter based on the relaxation-time approximation will be reported. The accuracy and ease of computation of the lattice thermal conductivity using these methods will be compared. This approach paves the way for the construction of accurate bulk interatomic potentials database, from which lattice dynamics and thermal properties can be calculated and used in larger scale simulation methods such as Monte Carlo.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prithvi R. Pandey ◽  
Bartosz Różycki ◽  
Reinhard Lipowsky ◽  
Thomas R. Weikl

AbstractWe investigate the structural and orientational variability of the membrane-embedded T cell receptor (TCR) – CD3 complex in extensive atomistic molecular dynamics simulations based on the recent cryo-EM structure determined by Dong et al. (2019). We find that the TCR extracellular (EC) domain is highly variable in its orientation by attaining tilt angles relative to the membrane normal that range from 15° to 55°. The tilt angle of the TCR EC domain is both coupled to a rotation of the domain and to characteristic changes throughout the TCR – CD3 complex, in particular in the EC interactions of the Cβ FG loop of the TCR, as well as in the orientation of transmembrane helices. The concerted motions of the membrane-embedded TCR – CD3 complex revealed in our simulations provide atomistic insights for force-based models of TCR activation, which involve such structural changes in response to tilt-inducing forces on antigen-bound TCRs.


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.


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