Envelope molecular-orbital theory of extended systems. I. Electronic states of organic quasilinear nanoheterostructures

A conceptually appealing and computationally economical course-grained molecular-orbital (MO) theory for extended quasilinear molecular heterostructures is presented. The formalism, which is based on a straightforward adaptation, by including explicitly the vacuum, of the envelope-function approxima...

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Autores:
Tipo de recurso:
Fecha de publicación:
2011
Institución:
Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación
Repositorio:
Repositorio Minciencias
Idioma:
eng
OAI Identifier:
oai:repositorio.minciencias.gov.co:20.500.14143/21671
Acceso en línea:
https://repositorio.minciencias.gov.co/handle/20.500.14143/21671
Palabra clave:
Química cuántica
Química física
Números cuánticos
Teoría molecular
Modelos matemáticos
Electrones -- Partículas
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License
http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_f1cf
Description
Summary:A conceptually appealing and computationally economical course-grained molecular-orbital (MO) theory for extended quasilinear molecular heterostructures is presented. The formalism, which is based on a straightforward adaptation, by including explicitly the vacuum, of the envelope-function approximation widely employed in solid-state physics leads to a mapping of the three-dimensional single-particle eigenvalue equations into simple one-dimensional hole and electron Schrödinger-like equations with piecewise-constant effective potentials and masses. The eigenfunctions of these equations are envelope MO's in which the short-wavelength oscillations present in the full MO's, associated with the atomistic details of the molecular potential, are smoothed out automatically. The approach is illustrated by calculating the envelope MO's of high-lying occupied and low-lying virtual π states in prototypical nanometric heterostructures constituted by oligomers of polyacetylene and polydiacetylene. Comparison with atomistic electronic-structure calculations reveals that the envelope-MO energies agree very well with the energies of the π MO's and that the envelope MO's describe precisely the long-wavelength variations of the π MO's. This envelope MO theory, which is generalizable to extended systems of any dimensionality, is seen to provide a useful tool for the qualitative interpretation and quantitative prediction of the single-particle quantum states in mesoscopic molecular structures and the design of nanometric molecular devices with tailored energy levels and wavefunctions.