Combined inelastic neutron scattering and solid-state DFT study of dynamics of hydrogen atoms in trioctahedral 1M phlogopite

Abstract

Inelastic neutron scattering (INS) was used to study the vibrational dynamics of the hydrogen atoms in natural trioctahedral phlogopite, K0.93Na0.03(Mg2.47Fe0.22Al0.16Fe0.04Tl0.06)[Si2.84Al1.16]O10OH1.71F0.28Cl0.01, within the 50–1,000 cm−1 energy range. The INS spectra collected using direct geometry spectrometer SEQUOIA (ORNL) were interpreted by means of the solid-state DFT calculations covering both normal mode analysis and molecular dynamics. To optimize the structure and to calculate the vibrational modes under harmonic approximation, both a hybrid PBE0 and the AM05 functional were used, while the molecular dynamics calculations (60 ps/1 fs) were performed only with the computationally less-demanding AM05 functional. The main contributions to the dominant band within ~750–550 cm−1 are symmetric and antisymmetric Mg–O–H bending modes, overlapping with the skeletal stretching and bending modes causing weaker secondary movements of H atoms of inner hydroxyl groups. Signatures of the Mg–O–H bending modes appear down to ~400 cm−1, where a region of octahedra deformation modes starts. These deformations cause just shallow movements of the hydrogen atoms and are mirrored by the modes with close vibrational energies. The region from ~330 cm−1 down to the low-energy end of the spectrum portrays induced vibrations of the H atoms caused by deformation of individual polyhedra, translational vibrations of the parts of the 2:1 layer relative one to another, and librational and translational vibrations of the layer. The main difference between the INS spectrum of dioctahedral Al-muscovite and trioctahedral Mg-phlogopite is that the Mg–O–H modes are all assigned to in-plane vibrations of the respective hydrogen atoms.