Realistic models of amorphous silica surfaces with different degrees of hydroxylation and of the MCM‐41 mesoporous material are determined ab initio at the B3LYP level. Comparison with structural and vibrational experimental data confirms the validity of these models, which will be very useful for future computational studies.

A partial charge shell-ion model potential for silica polymorphs and their hydroxylated surfaces(FFSiOH) was parametrized in a self-consistent way using periodic B3LYP results for bulk R-cristobaliteand the (100) and (001) hydroxylated surfaces. The reliability of the new potentials was checked bycomparing structures, vibrational frequencies and relative phase stabilities of dense bulk silica polymorphs,namely R-quartz, R-cristobalite, R-tridymite, and Stishovite with both experimental and B3LYP data.The FFSiOH was also checked for computing structural and vibrational features of representative all-silica microporous materials, namely edingtonite, chabazite, and faujasite. As a last step, FFSiOH wasadopted to predict OH stretching vibrational frequencies and relative thermodynamic stability of themost common fully hydroxylated surfaces of the dense silica polymorphs, the (100) and (001) facesof all-silica edingtonite, the features of the local Si-defect in chabazite and sodalite known as (SiOH)4hydrogarnet and the geometries of H-bonded silanol groups of an amorphous silica surface. In all casesexcellent agreement resulted between FFSiOH and B3LYP periodic data and experimental data, whenavailable. The new FFSiOH force field opens up the molecular simulation of materials in which thesurface hydroxyl groups play a key role, as is the case for amorphous silica surfaces, all-silica zeoliteexternal surfaces, and the internal walls of mesoporous materials

Different models of hydroxylated surfaces of quartz, cristobalite, and tridymite have been studied with the hybrid B3LYP functional using the Gaussian basis set of polarized double-ζ quality with periodic boundary conditions. Starting from the optimized bulk structures of the polymorphs, 2D slabs exhibiting low (hkl) crystallographic planes have been cut, dangling bonds healed by hydroxyl groups, and the final structures fully optimized. The H-bond pattern at a given surface depends on the (hkl) plane and on the OH group density, exhibiting isolated, weakly interacting pairs, short chains, or strings extending through the whole surface. Cases in which no H-bonds are present envisage either a very low OH density or slab structural rigidity which hinders the OH groups to establish H-bond contacts. The thermodynamics of surface hydroxylation of the considered polymorphs has been shown to correlate with the strength of the H-bonds formed at the surfaces measured by the bathochromic shift of the ν(OH) stretching frequency with respect to the value for a free surface OH group. Simulation of the vibrational spectra in the OH stretching region for all surfaces of each polymorph showed a general good agreement with the experimental spectra recorded on polycrystalline powdered samples validating the present surface models for further studies on molecular adsorption.