PNNL

Abstract

Molecular dynamics simulations and ab initio electronic structure calculations were carried out to determine the rate of charge transfer in stoichiometric wüstite (FeO). The charge transfer of interest occurs by II/III valence interchange between nearest-neighbor Fe atoms, with the Fe(III) constituting a ‘hole’ electronic defect. There are two possible nearest-neighbor charge transfers in the FeO lattice, which occur between edge-sharing or corner-sharing FeO6 octahedra. Molecular dynamics simulations predict charge transfer rates of 3.7x1011 and 1.9x109 s-1 for the edge and corner transfers, respectively, in good agreement with those calculated using an ab initio cluster approach (1.6x1011 and 8.0x108 s-1, respectively). The calculated rates are also similar to those along basal and c-axis directions in hematite (a-Fe2O3) determined previously. Therefore, as is the case for hematite, wüstite is predicted to show anisotropic electrical conductivity. Our findings indicate that a rigid ion model does not give acceptable results, thus showing the need to account for the change in polarizability of the system upon charge transfer. Our model achieves this by using a simple mechanical shell model. By calculating the electronic coupling matrix elements for many transition state configurations obtained from the molecular dynamics simulations, we found evidence that the position of the bridging oxygen atoms can greatly affect the amount electronic coupling between the donor and acceptor states. Finally, we address the effect of oxygen vacancies on the charge transfer. It was found that an oxygen vacancy not only creates a driving force for holes to transport away from the vacancy (or equivalently for electrons to diffuse toward the vacancy) but also lowers the free energy barriers for charge transfer. In addition, the reorganization energy significantly differed from the non-defective case in a small radius around the defect.