Theoretical study of the migration of the hydrogen atom adsorbed on aluminum nanowire

We study the behavior of a hydrogen atom adsorbed on aluminum nanowire based on density functional theory. In this study, we focus on the electronic structure, potential energy surface (PES), and quantum mechanical effects on hydrogen and deuterium atoms. The activation energy of the diffusion of a hydrogen atom to the axis direction is derived as 0.19 eV from PES calculations. The probability density, which is calculated by including quantum effects, is localized on an aluminum top site in both cases of hydrogen and deuterium atoms of the ground state. In addition, some excited states are distributed between aluminum atoms on the surface of the nanowire. The energy difference between the ground state and these excited states are below 0.1 eV, which is much smaller than the activation energy of PES calculations. Thus using these excited states, hydrogen and deuterium atoms may move to the axial direction easily. We also discuss the electronic structure of the nanowire surface using quantum energy density defined by one of the authors.