The color center singlet state of oxygen vacancies in TiO${}_2$

Abstract

Oxygen vacancies are ubiquitous in TiO${}_2$ and play key roles in catalysis and magnetism applications.Despite being extensively investigated, the electronic structure of oxygen vacancies in TiO${}_2$ remains controversial both experimentally and theoretically.Here we report a study of a neutral oxygen vacancy in TiO${}_2$ using state-of-the-art quantum chemical electronic structure methods.We find that the ground state is a color center singlet state in both the rutile and the anatase phase of TiO${}_2$. Specifically, embedded CCSD(T) calculations find, for an oxygen vacancy in rutile, that the lowest triplet state energy is 0.6 eV above the singlet state, and in anatase the triplet state energy is higher by 1.4 eV. Our study provides fresh insights on the electronic structure of the oxygen vacancy in TiO${}_2$, clarifying earlier controversies and potentially inspiring future studies of defects with correlated wave function theories.

References in corpus (4)

• Structure of a model TiO2 photocatalytic interface
• NECI: N-Electron Configuration Interaction with emphasis on state-of-the-art stochastic methods
• First-principles DFT+GW study of oxygen vacancies in rutile TiO2
• Small polarons and the Janus nature of ${\text{TiO}}_{\text{2}}(110)$

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Surface science using coupled cluster theory via local Wannier functions and in-RPA-embedding: the case of water on graphitic carbon nitride
• A full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo study of ScO, TiO and VO molecules
• Graphic characterization and clustering configuration descriptors of determinant space for molecules
• General embedded cluster protocol for accurate modeling of oxygen vacancies in metal-oxides