Hematite is a possible photoanode for photoelectrochemical cells (PECs) that is widely studied using density functional theory (DFT). In this paper we perform more accurate calculations of the absorption spectrum of hematite using the one-shot Green’s function (G 0 W 0) and Bethe–Salpeter equation (BSE) methods, which take excited states into account and compare the spectrum to experimental data. We found a match between our calculations and the observed absorption spectra in peak locations. Furthermore, there is anisotropy of the absorption spectra that is concurrent with the crystal structure. We also calculated the absorption spectrum of hematite intermediates during catalysis of the oxygen evolution reaction to better understand which intermediate is dominant during the reaction and the contribution of excited states to catalysis. The *O intermediate was found to be the most optically and chemically dominant species during catalysis.
The possibility that changes in the plasticity of expanding cell walls are involved in regulating early leaf growth responses to nutrient deficiencies in monocot plants was investigated. Intact maize seedlings (Zea mays L.) which were hydroponically grown with their roots in low-nutrient solution (1 mol m"^ CaCl2) showed early inhibition of first-leaf growth, as compared with seedlings on complete nutrient solution. This early inhibition of leaf growth was not associated with reduced cell production. However, segmental elongation along the cell expansion zone at the base of the leaf and the lengths of mature epidermal cells were reduced by the low-nutrient treatment. Solute (osmotic) potentials in the expanding leaf tissues were unchanged. In contrast, low-nutrient treatments significantly altered leaf plasticity, i.e. the irreversible extension caused by applying a small force in the direction of leaf growth. For example, in vivo plasticity decreased, along with leaf growth, after transfer of seedlings from complete nutrient solution to low-nutrient solution for 15 h. Conversely, in vivo plasticity increased, along with leaf growth, after transfer of plants previously grown on low-nutrient solution to complete nutrient solution for 15 h. The nutrient treatments also induced similar changes in the in vitro plasticity of the expanding leaf cell walls. There were no consistent changes in elasticity. Thus, reductions in the plasticity of expanding leaf cell walls appear to be involved in controlling the early inhibition of maize leaf growth by root imposition of nutrient stress.
Hematite has been widely studied for catalytic water splitting, but the role of the interactions between catalytic sites is unknown. In this paper, we calculate the oxygen evolution reaction free energies and the surface adsorption distribution using a combination of density functional theory and Monte Carlo simulations to "cover the waterfront," or cover a wide range of properties with a simulation of the hematite surface under working conditions. First, we show that modeling noninteracting catalytic sites provides a poor explanation of hematite's slow reaction kinetics. The interactions between the catalytic site may hinder catalysis through the strong interactions of *OH 2 and *OOH intermediates, which cause the reaction to revert back to the *O intermediate. Hence, neighboring interactions may be a possible reason for the abundant, experimentally observed *O intermediate on the surface. This study demonstrates how neighboring sites impact the energy required for catalytic steps, thus providing new avenues to improve catalysis by controlling neighboring site interactions. Computational DetailsCalculations were performed in VASP 5.4.4 [14][15][16][17] using the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) exchange-correlation functional. The spin-[a] N.
Water splitting is a promising method for hydrogen generation, but current catalytic reactions suffer from low efficiency. One possible reason for such inefficiency is a high kinetic barrier for water oxidation, and there is a lack of direct and efficient method to calculate the barrier for each reaction. In this paper, the inner sphere component of the reorganization energy that contributed to the activation energies is calculated. A novel algorithm is used for calculating the reorganization energy based on Marcus theory combined with the climbing image nudged elastic band method used to find transition states and activation energies of the oxygen evolution reaction steps, which allows the calculation of the activation energy at different potentials and without simulating solvation in order to obtain the inner sphere component alone arising from the reorganization of the ionic surface. The new method is tested in both acidic and basic conditions and with explicit water molecules, as well as implicit solvation. It is discovered that the reaction involving the transition of the *O intermediate into *OOH has the highest activation energy of all steps, thus explaining the high coverage of the *O intermediate found by experiments.
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