Universität Stuttgart
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Item Open Access Long-term stability of capped and buffered palladium-nickel thin films and nanostructures for plasmonic hydrogen sensing applications(2013) Strohfeldt, Nikolai; Tittl, Andreas; Giessen, HaraldOne of the main challenges in optical hydrogen sensing is the stability of the sensor material. We found and studied an optimized material combination for fast and reliable optical palladium-based hydrogen sensing devices. It consists of a palladium-nickel alloy that is buffered by calcium fluoride and capped with a very thin layer of platinum. Our system shows response times below 10 s and almost no short-term aging effects. Furthermore, we successfully incorporated this optimized material system into plasmonic nanostructures, laying the foundation for a stable and sensitive hydrogen detector.Item Open Access Efficient algorithms for electrostatic interactions including dielectric contrasts(2013) Arnold, Axel; Breitsprecher, Konrad; Fahrenberger, Florian; Kesselheim, Stefan; Lenz, Olaf; Holm, ChristianCoarse grained models of soft matter are usually combined with implicit solvent models that take the electrostatic polarizability into account via a dielectric background. In biophysical or nanoscale simulations that include water, this constant can vary greatly within the system. Performing molecular dynamics or other simulations that need compute exact electrostatic interactions between charges in those systems is computationally demanding. We review here several algorithms developped by us that perform exactly this task. For planar dielectric surfaces in partial periodic boundary conditions, the arising image charges can be either treated with the MMM2D algorithm in a very efficient and accurate way, or with the ELC term that enables the user to use his favorite 3D periodic Coulomb solver . Arbitrarily shaped interfaces can be dealt with using induced surface charges with the ICC algorithm. Finally, the local electrostatics algorithm MEMD (Maxwell Equations Molecular Dynamics) allows even to employ a smoothly varying dielectric constant in the systems. We introduce the concepts of these three algorithms, and an extension for the inclusion of boundaries that are to be held fixed at constant potential (metal conditions). For each method, we present a showcase application to highlight the importance of dielectric interfaces.Item Open Access Efficient approach to compute melting properties fully from ab initio with application to Cu(2017) Zhu, Li-Fang; Grabowski, Blazej; Neugebauer, JörgApplying thermodynamic integration within an ab initio-based free-energy approach is a state-of-the-art method to calculate melting points of materials. However, the high computational cost and the reliance on a good reference system for calculating the liquid free energy have so far hindered a general application. To overcome these challenges, we propose the two-optimized references thermodynamic integration using Langevin dynamics (TOR-TILD) method in this work by extending the two-stage upsampled thermodynamic integration using Langevin dynamics (TU-TILD) method, which has been originally developed to obtain anharmonic free energies of solids, to the calculation of liquid free energies. The core idea of TOR-TILD is to fit two empirical potentials to the energies from density functional theory based molecular dynamics runs for the solid and the liquid phase and to use these potentials as reference systems for thermodynamic integration. Because the empirical potentials closely reproduce the ab initio system in the relevant part of the phase space the convergence of the thermodynamic integration is very rapid. Therefore, the proposed approach improves significantly the computational efficiency while preserving the required accuracy. As a test case, we apply TOR-TILD to fcc Cu computing not only the melting point but various other melting properties, such as the entropy and enthalpy of fusion and the volume change upon melting. The generalized gradient approximation (GGA) with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) exchange-correlation functional and the local-density approximation (LDA) are used. Using both functionals gives a reliable ab initio confidence interval for the melting point, the enthalpy of fusion, and entropy of fusion.Item Open Access Determination of the thermally induced focal shift of processing optics for ultrafast lasers with average powers of up to 525 W(2018) Faas, Sebastian; Förster, Daniel J.; Weber, Rudolf; Graf, ThomasThe continuous increase of the average laser power of ultrafast lasers is a challenge with respect to the thermal load of the processing optics. The power which is absorbed in an optical element leads to a temperature increase, temperature gradients, changing refractive index and shape, and finally causes distortions of the transmitted beam. In a first-order approximation this results in a change of the focal position, which may lead to an uncontrolled change of the laser machining process. The present study reports on investigations on the focal shift induced in thin plano-convex lenses by a high-power ultra-short pulsed laser with an average laser power of up to 525 W. The focal shift was determined for lenses made of different materials (N-BK7, fused silica) and with different coatings (un-coated, broadband coating, specific wavelength coating).Item Open Access Estimation of the depth limit for percussion drilling with picosecond laser pulses(2018) Förster, Daniel J.; Weber, Rudolf; Holder, Daniel; Graf, ThomasItem Open Access Migration mechanisms of a faceted grain boundary(2018) Hadian, Raheleh; Grabowski, Blazej; Finnis, Michael W.; Neugebauer, JörgWe report molecular dynamics simulations and their analysis for a mixed tilt and twist grain boundary vicinal to the Σ7 symmetric tilt boundary of the type {123} in aluminum. When minimized in energy at 0K, a grain boundary of this type exhibits nanofacets that contain kinks. We observe that at higher temperatures of migration simulations, given extended annealing times, it is energetically favorable for these nanofacets to coalesce into a large terrace-facet structure. Therefore, we initiate the simulations from such a structure and study as a function of applied driving force and temperature how the boundary migrates. We find the migration of a faceted boundary can be described in terms of the flow of steps. The migration is dominated at lower driving force by the collective motion of the steps incorporated in the facet, and at higher driving forces by the step detachment from the terrace-facet junction and propagation of steps across the terraces. The velocity of steps on terraces is faster than their velocity when incorporated in the facet, and very much faster than the velocity of the facet profile itself, which is almost stationary. A simple kinetic Monte Carlo model matches the broad kinematic features revealed by the molecular dynamics. Since the mechanisms seem likely to be very general on kinked grain-boundary planes, the step-flow description is a promising approach to more quantitative modeling of general grain boundaries.Item Open Access Ab initio based method to study structural phase transitions in dynamically unstable crystals, with new insights on the β to ω transformation in titanium(2019) Korbmacher, Dominique; Glensk, Albert; Duff, Andrew Ian; Finnis, Michael W.; Grabowski, Blazej; Neugebauer, JörgWe present an approach that enables an efficient and accurate study of dynamically unstable crystals over the full temperature range. The approach is based on an interatomic potential fitted to ab initio molecular dynamics energies for both the high- and low-temperature stable phases. We verify by comparison to explicit ab initio simulations that such a bespoke potential, for which we use here the functional form of the embedded atom method, provides accurate transformation temperatures and atomistic features of the transformation. The accuracy of the potential makes it an ideal tool to study the important impact of finite size and finite time effects. We apply our approach to the dynamically unstable β (bcc) titanium phase and study in detail the transformation to the low-temperature stable hexagonal ω phase. We find a large set of previously unreported linear-chain disordered (LCD) structures made up of three types of [111]β linear-chain defects that exhibit randomly disordered arrangements in the (111)β plane.Item Open Access Phonon lifetimes throughout the Brillouin zone at elevated temperatures from experiment and ab Initio(2019) Glensk, Albert; Grabowski, Blazej; Hickel, Tilmann; Neugebauer, Jörg; Neuhaus, Jürgen; Hradil, Klaudia; Petry, Winfried; Leitner, MichaelWe obtain phonon lifetimes in aluminium by inelastic neutron scattering experiments, by ab initio molecular dynamics, and by perturbation theory. At elevated temperatures significant discrepancies are found between experiment and perturbation theory, which disappear when using molecular dynamics due to the inclusion of full anharmonicity and the correct treatment of the multiphonon background. We show that multiple-site interactions are small and that local pairwise anharmonicity dominates phonon-phonon interactions, which permits an efficient computation of phonon lifetimes.Item Open Access PFG-NMR studies of ATP diffusion in PEG-DA hydrogels and aqueous solutions of PEG-DA polymers(2018) Majer, Günter; Southan, AlexanderAdenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the major carrier of chemical energy in cells. The diffusion of ATP in hydrogels, which have a structural resemblance to the natural extracellular matrix, is therefore of great importance to understand many biological processes. In continuation of our recent studies of ATP diffusion in poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEG-DA) hydrogels by pulsed field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance (PFG-NMR), we present precise diffusion measurements of ATP in aqueous solutions of PEG-DA polymers, which are not cross-linked to a three-dimensional network. The dependence of the ATP diffusion on the polymer volume fraction in the hydrogels, φ, was found to be consistent with the predictions of a modified obstruction model or the free volume theory in combination with the sieving behavior of the polymer chains. The present measurements of ATP diffusion in aqueous solutions of the polymers revealed that the diffusion coefficient is determined by φ only, regardless of whether the polymers are cross-linked or not. These results seem to be inconsistent with the free volume model, according to which voids are formed by a statistical redistribution of surrounding molecules, which is expected to occur more frequently in the case of not cross-linked polymers. The present results indicate that ATP diffusion takes place only in the aqueous regions of the systems, with the volume fraction of the polymers, including a solvating water layer, being blocked for the ATP molecules. The solvating water layer increases the effective volume of the polymers by 66%. This modified obstruction model is most appropriate to correctly describe the ATP diffusion in PEG-DA hydrogels.Item Open Access Photo-excited dynamics in the excitonic insulator Ta2NiSe5(2018) Werdehausen, Daniel; Takayama, Tomohiro; Albrecht, Gelon; Lu, Yangfan; Takagi, Hidenori; Kaiser, StefanThe excitonic insulator is an intriguing correlated electron phase formed of condensed excitons. A promising candidate is the small band gap semiconductor Ta2NiSe5. Here we investigate the quasiparticle and coherent phonon dynamics in Ta2NiSe5 in a time resolved pump probe experiment. Using the models originally developed by Kabanov et al for superconductors (Kabanov et al 1999 Phys. Rev. B 59 1497), we show that the material’s intrinsic gap can be described as almost temperature independent for temperatures up to about 250 K to 275 K. This behavior supports the existence of the excitonic insulator state in Ta2NiSe5. The onset of an additional temperature dependent component to the gap above these temperatures suggests that the material is located in the BEC-BCS crossover regime. Furthermore, we show that this state is very stable against strong photoexcitation, which reveals that the free charge carriers are unable to effectively screen the attractive Coulomb interaction between electrons and holes, likely due to the quasi 1D structure of Ta2NiSe5.