Quantifying energetics of topological frustration in carbon nanostructures

Zachary Bullard, Eduardo Costa Girão, Colin Daniels, Bobby G. Sumpter, Vincent Meunier

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

We develop a graph theoretical formalism to account for the fact that sp2 carbon can become spin ordered or generate free radicals for purely topological reasons. While this phenomenon has been previously considered a binary operator, we here show a quantification in discrete units of frustrations. The graph theory method is combined with open density functional theory calculations to establish the existence of an energy of frustration that is shown to greatly improve the description of carbon nanostructure energetics using classical force fields. The methodology is illustrated for a number of systems and, owing to the small computational overhead associated with its evaluation, is expected to be easily integrable into any modeling approach based on a structure's adjacency matrix.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number245425
JournalPhysical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
Volume89
Issue number24
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 17 2014

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Condensed Matter Physics

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