Hydrogenated and deuterated iron clusters: Infrared spectra and density functional calculations

Iron clusters react sequentially with hydrogen molecules to form multiply hydrogenated products. The increases in cluster ionization potential upon reaction verify that hydrogen chemisorbs dissociatively to form iron cluster–hydride complexes, FenHm. At low source temperatures, the cluster–hydride complexes take up additional hydrogen molecules which are shown to be physisorbed onto the underlying FenHm complexes to form FenHm(H2)p species. The infrared spectra of FenHm and FenDm (n = 9–20) were obtained by the photodissociation action spectroscopic method in which depletion of the FenHm(H2)p and FenDm(D2)p species was the signature of absorption. The spectra, recorded in the 885–1090 cm−1 region, consist of several overlapping bands, each approximately 20 cm−1 in width. The dissimilarity of each FenHm(H2)p spectrum with the corresponding FenDm(D2)p spectrum indicates that the carrier involves hydrogen and is not merely due to absorption by the underlying iron cluster. Density functional calculations were performed on model complexes, Fe13H14 and Fe13D14, the iron portion of which was assumed to have Th symmetry. The infrared-active vibrational frequencies involving hydrogen bending and deuterium stretching are predicted to lie within the experimental frequency range of the experiment, well removed from the skeletal modes of the underlying iron cluster. The complexity of the observed spectra as compared to simulations based on the assumed (high-symmetry) model imply that the experimentally produced complexes possess low symmetry

Importance of self-interaction-error removal in density functional calculations on water cluster anions

Accurate description of the excess charge in water cluster anions is challenging for standard semi-local and (global) hybrid density functional approximations (DFAs). Using the recent unitary invariant implementation of the Perdew–Zunger self-interaction correction (SIC) method using Fermi-Löwdin orbitals, we assess the effect of self-interaction error on the vertical detachment energies of water cluster anions with the local spin density approximation (LSDA), Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE) generalized gradient approximation, and the strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) meta-GGA functionals. Our results show that for the relative energies of isomers with respect to reference CCSD(T) values, the uncorrected SCAN functional has the smallest deviation of 21 meV, better than that for the MP2 method. The performance of SIC-SCAN is comparable to that of MP2 and is better than SIC-LSDA and SIC-PBE, but it reverses the ordering of the two lowest isomers for water hexamer anions. Removing self interaction error (SIE) corrects the tendency of LSDA, PBE, and SCAN to over-bind the extra electron. The vertical detachment energies (VDEs) of water cluster anions, obtained from the total energy differences of corresponding anion and neutral clusters, are significantly improved by removing self-interaction and are better than the hybrid B3LYP functional, but fall short of MP2 accuracy. Removing SIE results in substantial improvement in the position of the eigenvalue of the extra electron. The negative of the highest occupied eigenvalue after SIC provides an excellent approximation to the VDE, especially for SIC-PBE where the mean absolute error with respect to CCSD(T) is only 17 meV, the best among all approximations compared in this work

Density-functional-based predictions of Raman and IR spectra for small Si clusters

We have used a density-functional-based approach to study the response of silicon clusters to applied electric fields. For the dynamical response, we have calculated the Raman activities and infrared (IR) intensities for all of the vibrational modes of several clusters (SiN with N=3-8, 10, 13, 20, and 21) using the local density approximation (LDA). For the smaller clusters (N=3-8) our results are in good agreement with previous quantum-chemical calculations and experimental measurements, establishing that LDA-based IR and Raman data can be used in conjunction with measured spectra to determine the structure of clusters observed in experiment. To illustrate the potential of the method for larger clusters, we present calculated IR and Raman data for two low-energy isomers of Si10 and for the lowest-energy structure of Si13 found to date. For the static response, we compare our calculated polarizabilities for N=10, 13, 20, and 21 to recent experimental measurements. The calculated results are in rough agreement with experiment, but show less variation with cluster size than the measurements. Taken together, our results show that LDA calculations can offer a powerful means for establishing the structures of experimentally fabricated clusters and nanoscale systems