scholarly journals Ab initio Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Field-Coupled Nanocomputing Molecules

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Yuri Ardesi ◽  
Alessandro Gaeta ◽  
Giuliana Beretta ◽  
Gianluca Piccinini ◽  
Mariagrazia Graziano

Molecular Field-Coupled Nanocomputing (FCN) represents one of the most promising solutions to overcome the issues introduced by CMOS scaling. It encodes the information in the molecule charge distribution and propagates it through electrostatic intermolecular interaction. The need for charge transport is overcome, hugely reducing power dissipation.At the current state-of-the-art, the analysis of molecular FCN is mostly based on quantum mechanics techniques, or ab initio evaluated transcharacteristics. In all the cases, studies mainly consider the position of charges/atoms to be fixed. In a realistic situation, the position of atoms, thus the geometry, is subjected to molecular vibrations. In this work, we analyse the impact of molecular vibrations on the charge distribution of the 1,4-diallyl butane. We employ Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics to provide qualitative and quantitative results which describe the effects of temperature and electric fields on molecule charge distribution, taking into account the effects of molecular vibrations. The molecules are studied at near-absolute zero, cryogenic and ambient temperature conditions, showing promising results which proceed towards the assessment of the molecular FCN technology as a possible candidate for future low-power digital electronics. From a modelling perspective, the diallyl butane demonstrates good robustness against molecular vibrations, further confirming the possibility to use static transcharacteristics to analyse molecular circuits.

Molecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (15) ◽  
pp. 3371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Cassone ◽  
Adriano Sofia ◽  
Jiri Sponer ◽  
A. Marco Saitta ◽  
Franz Saija

Intense electric fields applied on H-bonded systems are able to induce molecular dissociations, proton transfers, and complex chemical reactions. Nevertheless, the effects induced in heterogeneous molecular systems such as methanol-water mixtures are still elusive. Here we report on a series of state-of-the-art ab initio molecular dynamics simulations of liquid methanol-water mixtures at different molar ratios exposed to static electric fields. If, on the one hand, the presence of water increases the proton conductivity of methanol-water mixtures, on the other, it hinders the typical enhancement of the chemical reactivity induced by electric fields. In particular, a sudden increase of the protonic conductivity is recorded when the amount of water exceeds that of methanol in the mixtures, suggesting that important structural changes of the H-bond network occur. By contrast, the field-induced multifaceted chemistry leading to the synthesis of e.g., hydrogen, dimethyl ether, formaldehyde, and methane observed in neat methanol, in 75:25, and equimolar methanol-water mixtures, completely disappears in samples containing an excess of water and in pure water. The presence of water strongly inhibits the chemical reactivity of methanol.


Author(s):  
Boris Merinov ◽  
Sergey Morozov

The proton transport mechanism in superprotonic phases of solid acids is a subject of experimental and theoretical studies for a number of years. Despite this, details of the mechanism still...


Membranes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 355
Author(s):  
Tamar Zelovich ◽  
Mark E. Tuckerman

Fuel cell-based anion-exchange membranes (AEMs) and proton exchange membranes (PEMs) are considered to have great potential as cost-effective, clean energy conversion devices. However, a fundamental atomistic understanding of the hydroxide and hydronium diffusion mechanisms in the AEM and PEM environment is an ongoing challenge. In this work, we aim to identify the fundamental atomistic steps governing hydroxide and hydronium transport phenomena. The motivation of this work lies in the fact that elucidating the key design differences between the hydroxide and hydronium diffusion mechanisms will play an important role in the discovery and determination of key design principles for the synthesis of new membrane materials with high ion conductivity for use in emerging fuel cell technologies. To this end, ab initio molecular dynamics simulations are presented to explore hydroxide and hydronium ion solvation complexes and diffusion mechanisms in the model AEM and PEM systems at low hydration in confined environments. We find that hydroxide diffusion in AEMs is mostly vehicular, while hydronium diffusion in model PEMs is structural. Furthermore, we find that the region between each pair of cations in AEMs creates a bottleneck for hydroxide diffusion, leading to a suppression of diffusivity, while the anions in PEMs become active participants in the hydronium diffusion, suggesting that the presence of the anions in model PEMs could potentially promote hydronium diffusion.


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