Simulação de estrutura e cálculo de propriedades de Zn5(OH)8Cl2.H2O e Zn5(OH)8(NO3)2.2H2O utilizando métodos ab initio

Abstract

Many layered compounds, like the double hydroxides and the hydroxide salts, have been gaining attention lately due to their various applicabilities in catalysis, anionic exchange and oxide precursors. The studied compounds here have octahedral and tetrahedral sites, which have been classified as type-2 hydroxide salts by Louër et al. Zinc hydroxide chloride monohydrate (Zn5(OH)8Cl2.H2O) is rhombohedric and is found in the nature as a mineral so-called simonkolleite. Whereas zinc hydroxide nitrate dihydrate (Zn5(OH)8(NO3)2.2H2O) is monoclinic and does not have natural occurrence. Their nitrates are not coordinated to the tetrahedral zincs, whereas the chlorides of Zn5(OH)8Cl2.H2O are grafted to the tetrahedral zincs. Their water molecules are grafted to the tetrahedrons and, in order to balance the charges, the nitrates are located in the interlayer region. Those hydroxide salts and a modification of the zinc hydroxide nitrate with ammonia molecules grafted to the tetrahedros (BENARD, 1995) have been studied by computational simulation. The Quantum ESPRESSO package based in the Density Functional Theory (DFT) with waveplanes and periodic boundary conditions was used for the calculations. The water molecules were removed from the optimized hydrate structures and, later on, those were re-optmized. All the experimental data were compared with the ones obtained by simulated structures and a good agreement was shown. The simulated dehydrate structure of Zn5(OH)8(NO3)2.2H2O did not correspond to the structure obtained by calcination, as it was shown by the thermodynamical analysis of the calcination process. However, it was concluded that this structure corresponds to a local minimum due to the lack of imaginary frequencies. Post-processing calculations were conducted in order to analyze the compounds' interactions and the chemical species. The chlorides and nitrates of both compounds were chemically equivalents, as it was shown by the pDOS calculations (projected Density of States). The hydroxyls of the unit cells could be classified in two groups based on their chemical equivalence. It could also be concluded with this work that the unit cell reduction method (DEYSE, 2012) was able to reduce the computational costs and to predict certain properties of the studied compounds.