12 research outputs found
A maximum density rule for surfaces of quasicrystals
A rule due to Bravais of wide validity for crystals is that their surfaces
correspond to the densest planes of atoms in the bulk of the material.
Comparing a theoretical model of i-AlPdMn with experimental results, we find
that this correspondence breaks down and that surfaces parallel to the densest
planes in the bulk are not the most stable, i.e. they are not so-called bulk
terminations. The correspondence can be restored by recognizing that there is a
contribution to the surface not just from one geometrical plane but from a
layer of stacked atoms, possibly containing more than one plane. We find that
not only does the stability of high-symmetry surfaces match the density of the
corresponding layer-like bulk terminations but the exact spacings between
surface terraces and their degree of pittedness may be determined by a simple
analysis of the density of layers predicted by the bulk geometric model.Comment: 8 pages of ps-file, 3 Figs (jpg
An efficient technique for the prediction of solvent-dependent morphology: the COSMIC method
We have developed a method of calculating the solvation energy of a surface based on an implicit solvent model. This new model called COSMIC, is an extension of the established COSMO solvation approach and allows the technique to be applied to systems of any periodicity from finite molecules, through polymers and surfaces, to cavities of water within a bulk unit cell. As well as extending the scope of the COSMO technique, it also improves the numerical stability through removal of anumber of discontinuities in the potential energy surface. The COSMIC model has been applied to barium sulfate, where it was found to produce similar surface energies and configurations to the much more computationally expensive explicit molecular dynamics simulations. The calculated solvated morphology of barium sulfate was found to differ significantly to that calculated in vacuum with a reduced number of faces present