, naphthalene,
anthracene 
) are well known molecules,
which consist of linearly fused benzene rings.
We have shown that the honey-comb-like
arrangement of carbon bonds leads to a surprising periodicity of the properties
of oligoacenes, as we keep adding more and more rings. We argue that this is a
natural consequence of the band structure of the infinite chain (polyacene),
having a relativistic dispersion close to the Fermi points.
Open issues: The possibility of observing gap oscillations is very attractive. Yet, long oligoacenes are diffucult to synthesize. As theorists, we currently investigate whether the oscillations could be observed in a broader class of molecular wires, more amenable to synthesis, perhaps.
We currently develop and implement the GW approach for calculations on clusters and molecules. This will enable the prediction of spectral functions of coupled systems, ionization potentials, and optical excitation spectra of intermediate sized, neutral and charged, systems at much higher accuracy than currently possible. By implementing this method in an efficient and widely used academic quantum chemistry package we will make it available to broad communities in quantum chemistry and computational materials sciences. We expect that the availability of this approach will have a significant impact on computational research in molecular electronics, atomic cluster physics and surface sciences.
.
A common fabrication method of the building blocks is based on etching techniques, limiting the sizes to several hundred nanometers. A widely used artifical atom is the so-called split ring resonator, whose response behaviour can be easily understood in terms of circuit parameters. For resonances to appear in the optical regime, one has to go to smaller sizes than typically accessible via etching techniques. Hence, we take an alternative route and focus on organic π-conjugated molecules, mimicking a split ring resonator. By means of numerical and analytical calculations for a model system we identify the molecular parameters which determine the response of a single molecule to light. We also analyse the influence of bianisotropy and ultimately calculate the index of refraction for the effective medium, taking into account the interaction among the individual rings. Based on these calculations we make suggestions for the size and the electronic structure of canditate molecules exhibiting a negative index of refraction. Employing quantum chemical calculations with the TURBOMOLE program package, we then extract parameters from density functional theory calculations for real molecules, so that we can obtain quantitative results for the index of refraction.
The Dirac nature of the dispersion of graphene follows from the symmetries of its hexagonal lattice. The electronic properties of graphene “flakes” can be quite different from the bulk due to the presence of edges. In particular, they also give rise to lattice distortions, i.e, strain. Strain is particularly significant in experimental conditions as it might well be one of the reason behind the observed surface corrugation (“ripples”) in graphene.
In this project we mainly focus on the influence of graphene edges (zigzag) on bulk observables, i.e, elastic constants. In particular, we calculate the flake's free energy and disentangle the surface, bulk and corner contributions. We discover that the surface contribution exerts a pressure which substantially diminishes the carbon-carbon distance in the flake's interior. We have computed all the elastic constants (“Lamè parameters”) including bending rigidity using Density Functional Theories (DFT) as implemented in a quantum chemistry package, TURBOMOLE. By considering the contribution of zero point vibrations (phonons), We also determine the quantum corrections in the elastic energy. We found that the phonon contribution is most significant in the bending rigidity, κ, which decreases by ≈ 26% from its original value (κ=1.2eV).
