Relationship between x-ray emission and absorption spectroscopy and the local H-bond environment in water

The connection between specific spectrum features in the water X-ray absorption (XAS) and X-ray emission (XES) spectra and the local H-bond coordination is studied based on structures obtained from path-integral molecular dynamics simulations using either the opt-PBE-vdW density functional or the MB-pol force field. Computing the XES spectrum using all molecules in a snapshot results in only one peak in the lone-pair (1b1) region while the experiment shows two peaks separated by 0.8-0.9 eV. Different H-bond configurations were classified based on the local structure index (LSI) and a geometrical H-bond cone criterion. We find that tetrahedrally coordinated molecules characterised by high LSI values and two strong donated and two strong accepted H-bonds contribute to the low energy 1b1 emission peak and to the post-edge region in absorption. Molecules with asymmetric H-bond environment with one strong accepted and one strong donated H-bond and low LSI values give rise to the high energy 1b1 peak in the emission spectrum and mainly contribute to the pre-edge and main-edge in the absorption spectrum. The 1b1 peak splitting can be increased to 0.62 eV by imposing constraints on the H-bond length, i.e. for very tetrahedral structures short H-bonds (less than 2.68 Å) and for very asymmetric structures elongated H-bonds (longer than 2.8 Å). Such structures are present, but underrepresented, in the simulations which give more of an average of the two extremes

Simulation of Core-Level Spectra of H-bonded Systems

The thesis consists of three related projects where attempts have been made to simulate X-Ray Absorption (XAS) spectra of water and hexagonal ice, static non-resonant X-ray Emission (XES) spectrum of water and to apply the semi-classical approximation to Kramers-Heisenberg formula (SCKH) formalism to calculate the non-resonant XES spectrum of water and methanol. The first project is devoted to an investigation of the performance of damped response theory in combination with the DFT electronic structure method (CPP-DFT) in XAS spectrum simulations of liquid water. Based on this study the basis set and cluster size have been determined. The summed CPP-DFT XAS water spectrum was able to reproduce well the three main water absorption spectrum features - pre, main and post edge. The investigation of the CPP-DFT approach in case of hexagonal ice reveals that neither of four tested ice models with gradually increased degree of structural disorder can reproduce correctly the hexagonal ice spectrum features. A critical investigation of the available experimental ice spectra showed that those spectra are quite different depending on the sample preparation procedure and registration mode. This leads to questioning which ice structures have been actually measured. This was investigated using a Reverse Monte-Carlo based technique which fits the reference spectra using a library of pre-computed structures and assigns weights to each structure. The obtained weights were then used to generate the corresponding radial distribution functions (RDFs). The calculated RDFs have peaks corresponding to perfect lattice distances, but significantly broader than expected for the ideal lattice. In conclusion it was suggested that the available XAS ice spectra do not correspond to the perfect hexagonal ice, but rather samples with varying fraction of defects and possible impurity of amorphous ice. Simulation of the static non-resonant XES spectrum of water has been performed based on time-dependent density functional theory with the Tamm-Dancoff approximation (TD-DFT/TDA) level of theory. The simulation reveals that the 1b1 peak position is sensitive to the number of H-bonds and to the tetrahedrality of the environment as measured by the local structure index (LSI). The 1b1 peak splitting is observed between two structure sets - tetrahedrally coordinated, low density liquid (LDL) like, structures and asymmetric, high density liquid (HDL) like, structures. The magnitude of the peak splitting depends also on the H-bond lengths. A maximum value 0.6 eV is obtained between LDL structures with short bonds (&lt; 2.68 Å) and HDL structures with long bonds (&gt; 2.8 Å). The influence of core-hole induced dynamics on the spectrum profile has been studied based on the SCKH approximation for liquid water and methanol. The lone pair 2aʺ peak splitting in liquid methanol was explained based on methanol molecules in different H-bond coordination. The low energy 2aʺ peak is assigned to strongly H-bonded methanol molecules while weakly bonded or non-bonded methanol molecules contribute mainly to the high energy 2aʺ peak. The 2aʺ peak splitting is observed in the static XES spectrum, while inclusion of the core-hole induced dynamics preserves the split and does not generate additional spectrum features, but broadens and smears out spectrum features seen in the static case. Inclusion of the dynamical effects in the water case has revealed that the 1b1 peak splitting is preserved for LDL structures with short bonds and HDL structures with long bonds while unbalanced water structures with odd number of H-bonds generate peaks in between these two extreme cases.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 5: Manuscript.</p

Requirements of first-principles calculations of X-ray absorption spectra of liquid water

A computational benchmark study on X-ray absorption spectra of water has been performed by means of transition-potential density functional theory (TP-DFT), damped time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), and damped coupled cluster (CC) linear response theory. For liquid water, using TDDFT with a tailored CAM-B3LYP functional and a polarizable embedding, we find that an embedding with over 2000 water molecules is required to fully converge spectral features for individual molecules, but a substantially smaller embedding can be used within averaging schemes. TP-DFT and TDDFT calculations on 100 MD structures demonstrate that TDDFT produces a spectrum with spectral features in good agreement with experiment, while it is more difficult to fully resolve the spectral features in the TP-DFT spectrum. Similar trends were also observed for calculations of bulk ice. In order to further establish the performance of these methods, small water clusters have been considered also at the CC2 and CCSD levels of theory. Issues regarding the basis set requirements for spectrum simulations of liquid water and the determination of gas-phase ionization potentials are also discussed.Funding agencies: Swedish Research Council [621-2014-4646, 621-2011-4223]; Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation [KAW-2013.0020]</p