Permeation of hydrogen across graphdiyne: molecular dynamics vs. quantum simulations and role of membrane motion

Abstract

Previous research based on electronic structure calculations and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have demonstrated that graphdiyne (GDY) is a very suitable two-dimensional membrane for the separation of small molecules in a gas mixture of different species. However, quantum effects may play a role in the dynamics of these permeation processes when light molecules are the ones involved in the crossing of the GDY subnanometric pores. In this work we report rigorous quantum-mechanical calculations together with equivalent MD simulations of the transport of H2 molecules through a static GDY membrane, as a case study for the validity of the application to these problems of classical dynamics. The force fields employed are based on an improved Lennard-Jones formulation, with parameters optimized by means of accurate ab initio calculations. It is found that, although quantum effects are still significant at the temperatures of interest (between 250 and 350 K), MD simulations are able to reasonably reproduce the dependence of the quantum permeances with the temperature. Moreover, MD permeances computed with quantum corrections through Feynman-Hibbs effective potentials provide a lower bound to quantum permeances, while the pure classical counterpart gives an upper bound, thus leading to a well delimited range of confidence of the permeation results. Furthermore, within MD simulations it is possible to incorporate the thermal motion of the GDY layer and in this situation it is observed an enhancement of the permeances with respect to the fixed membrane case, due to a significant reduction of the permeation barriers when the GDY atoms are allowed to vibrate. It seems apparent therefore, that modeling the membrane motion is crucial to provide reliable simulations of the gas transport features.