Authors
S Hamad, CRA Catlow, SM Woodley, S Lago, JA Mejias
Publication date
2005/8/25
Journal
The Journal of Physical Chemistry B
Volume
109
Issue
33
Pages
15741-15748
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Description
The effect of the nanostructure on the photochemistry of TiO2 is an active field of research owing to its applications in photocatalysis and photovoltaics. Despite this interest, little is known of the structure of small particles of this oxide with sizes at the nanometer length scale. Here we present a computational study that locates the global minima in the potential energy surface of TinO2n clusters with n = 1−15. The search procedure does not refer to any of the known TiO2 polymorphs, and is based on a novel combination of simulated annealing and Monte Carlo basin hopping simulations, together with genetic algorithm techniques, with the energy calculated by means of an interatomic potential. The application of several different methods increases our confidence of having located the global minimum. The stable structures are then refined by means of density functional theory calculations. The results from the two …
Total citations
2006200720082009201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024714191411201721181621141614913131010
Scholar articles
S Hamad, CRA Catlow, SM Woodley, S Lago… - The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2005