The chemisorption of atomic (H, O, N, S, C), molecular (N2, CO, NO, NH3), and radical (CH3, OH, NOH) species on Ir(111) has been systematically studied. Self-consistent, periodic, density functional theory (DFT-GGA) calculations, using PW91 and RPBE functionals, have been used to determine preferred binding sites, chemisorbed structures, binding energies, vibrational frequencies, and the effect of surface relaxation for the above species at 0.25 ML surface coverage. The following order in binding energies from least to most strongly bound was determined:  N2 < NH3 < NO < CH3 < CO < OH < H < NOH < O < N < S < C. A preference for 3-fold sites for the atomic adsorbates was observed, with the exception of atomic H, which prefers top sites. Molecular species showed a preference for top sites with the exception of NOH; this species preferred fcc sites. Surface relaxation had only a small effect on energetics in most cases. Calculated vibrational frequencies, in general, were in good agreement with experimental frequencies and support experimentally proposed site preferences for all adsorbates where data are available. Finally, the thermochemistry of CO, NO, NOH, N2, NH3, and CH3 decomposition on Ir(111) was examined, leading to predictions for each species of the preference for either desorption or decomposition.

It is known that there are thermodynamic states for which the Gaussian-core fluid displays anomalous properties such as expansion upon isobaric cooling (density anomaly) and increased single-particle mobility upon isothermal compression (self-diffusivity anomaly). Here, we investigate how temperature and density affect its short-range translational structural order, as characterized by the two-body excess entropy. We find that there is a wide range of conditions for which the short-range translational order of the Gaussian-core fluid decreases upon isothermal compression (structural order anomaly). As we show, the origin of the structural anomaly is qualitatively similar to that of other anomalous fluids (e.g., water or colloids with short-range attractions) and is connected to how compression affects static correlations at different length scales. Interestingly, we find that the self-diffusivity of the Gaussian-core fluid obeys a scaling relationship with the two-body excess entropy that is very similar to the one observed for a variety of simple liquids. One consequence of this relationship is that the state points for which structural, self-diffusivity, and density anomalies of the Gaussian-core fluid occur appear as cascading regions on the temperature-density plane; a phenomenon observed earlier for models of waterlike fluids. There are, however, key differences between the anomalies of Gaussian-core and waterlike fluids, and we discuss how those can be qualitatively understood by considering the respective interparticle potentials of these models. Finally, we note that the self-diffusivity of the Gaussian-core fluid obeys different scaling laws depending on whether the two-body or total excess entropy is considered. This finding, which deserves more comprehensive future study, appears to underscore the significance of higher-body correlations for the behavior of fluids with bounded interactions.

When a fluid is confined to a nanopore, its thermodynamic properties differ from the properties of a bulk fluid, so measuring such properties of the confined fluid can provide information about the pore sizes. Here we report a simple relation between the pore size and isothermal compressibility of argon confined in these pores. Compressibility is calculated from the fluctuations of the number of particles in the grand canonical ensemble using two different simulation techniques: conventional grand-canonical Monte Carlo and grand-canonical ensemble transition-matrix Monte Carlo. Our results provide a theoretical framework for extracting the information on the pore sizes of fluid-saturated samples by measuring the compressibility from ultrasonic experiments.

Rosenfeld [Phys. Rev. A 15, 2545 (1977)] originally noticed that casting the transport coefficients of simple monatomic equilibrium fluids in a specific dimensionless form makes them approximately single-valued functions of excess entropy. This observation has predictive value because, while the transport coefficients of dense fluids can be difficult to estimate from first principles, the excess entropy can often be accurately predicted from liquid-state theory. In this work, we use molecular simulations to investigate whether Rosenfeld's observation is a special case of a more general scaling law relating the tracer diffusivities of particles in mixtures to the excess entropy. Specifically, we study the tracer diffusivities, static structure, and thermodynamic properties of a variety of one- and two-component model fluid systems with either additive or nonadditive interactions of the hard-sphere or Gaussian-core form. The results of the simulations demonstrate that the effects of mixture concentration and composition, particle-size asymmetry and additivity, and strength of the interparticle interactions in these fluids are consistent with an empirical scaling law relating the excess entropy to a dimensionless (generalized Rosenfeld) form of tracer diffusivity, which we introduce here. The dimensionless form of the tracer diffusivity follows from knowledge of the intermolecular potential and the transport/thermodynamic behavior of fluids in the dilute limit. The generalized Rosenfeld scaling requires less information and provides more accurate predictions than either Enskog theory or scalings based on the pair-correlation contribution to the excess entropy. As we show, however, it also suffers from some limitations especially for systems that exhibit significant decoupling of individual component tracer diffusivities.

Density profiles are the most common measure of inhomogeneous structure in confined fluids, but their connection to transport coefficients is poorly understood. We explore via simulation how tuning particle-wall interactions to flatten or enhance the particle layering of a model confined fluid impacts its self-diffusivity, viscosity, and entropy. Interestingly, interactions that eliminate particle layering significantly reduce confined fluid mobility, whereas those that enhance layering can have the opposite effect. Excess entropy helps to understand and predict these trends.Fluids confined to narrow spaces adopt an inhomogeneous distribution of density due to the interactions between the fluid particles and the boundaries. This density profile provides a basic means for characterizing confined fluid structure, and in particular how it differs from that of a homogeneous bulk system. For simple confined fluids, the density profile can be quantitatively predicted using classical density functional theory. However, differences between confined and bulk fluids are not limited to static structure. The former also flow, diffuse, and conduct heat at different rates than the latter. Unfortunately, a theory that can reliably predict transport coefficients has yet to emerge. In fact, even an intuitive understanding of how the density profile of a confined fluid connects to its dynamics is lacking.For bulk fluids, semi-empirical structure-property relations have helped to correlate and predict transport coefficients (see, e.g., [1,2,3]). Specifically, changes in thermodynamic state variables that increase short-range structural order of fluids are also known to decrease their mobility in a simple, quantifiable way. This is true even for systems that exhibit anomalous dynamical behavior, such as cold liquid water (where viscosity decreases upon compression) [4,5,6] or concentrated colloidal suspensions (where interparticle attractions increase mobility) [5,7]. Naïve extrapolation of this idea might lead one to suspect that inhomogeneous fluids with highly structured (e.g., layered) density profiles would tend to be more viscous and less diffusive than more spatially uniform fluids. Is that indeed the case? Here, we explore this issue quantitatively. Specifically, we use molecular simulation to investigate the relationship between the transport coefficients of an inhomogeneous fluid and its density profile, the latter of which can be modified in a precise way through the interactions of the fluid particles with the confining boundaries.A key empirical observation motivating this study is the existence of an isothermal correlation between the self-diffusion coefficient of simple inhomogeneous fluids and excess entropy (relative to ideal gas), which is approximately obeyed across a wide range of confining environments [8,9,10]. Since the magnitude of the excess entropy is itself a measure of structural order [11] , the aforementioned correlation is effectively a structure-property relationship. But how does excess entropy conn...