Pollak Hannah, Degiacomi Matteo T, Erastova Valentina
School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, Joseph Black Building, David Brewster Road, Edinburgh EH9 3FJ, United Kingdom.
Department of Physics, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom.
J Chem Theory Comput. 2024 Nov 12;20(21):9606-9617. doi: 10.1021/acs.jctc.4c00987. Epub 2024 Oct 15.
Clays are a broad class of ubiquitous layered materials. Their specific chemophysical properties are intimately connected to their molecular structure, featuring repeating patterns broken by substitutions. Molecular dynamics simulations can provide insight into the mechanisms leading to the emergent properties of these layered materials; however, up to now, idealized clay structures have been simulated to make the modeling process tractable. We present , a software facilitating the modeling of clay systems closely resembling experimentally determined structures. By comparing a realistic model to a commonly used montmorillonite clay model, we demonstrate that idealized models feature noticeably different ionic adsorption patterns. We then present an application of to the study the competitive barium and sodium adsorption on Wyoming montmorillonite, Georgia kaolinite, and Montana Illite, of interest in the context of nuclear waste disposal.
粘土是一类广泛存在的层状材料。它们的特定化学物理性质与其分子结构密切相关,其分子结构具有因取代而被破坏的重复模式。分子动力学模拟可以深入了解导致这些层状材料出现特性的机制;然而,到目前为止,为了使建模过程易于处理,人们一直模拟理想化的粘土结构。我们展示了一款软件,它有助于对与实验确定的结构非常相似的粘土系统进行建模。通过将一个实际模型与一个常用的蒙脱石粘土模型进行比较,我们证明理想化模型具有明显不同的离子吸附模式。然后,我们展示了该软件在研究钡和钠在怀俄明蒙脱石、佐治亚高岭土和蒙大拿伊利石上的竞争性吸附方面的应用,这在核废料处理的背景下具有重要意义。