Locating structures and evolution pathways of reconstructed rutile TiO2(011) using genetic algorithm aided density functional theory calculations.

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is an important metal oxide that has been used in many different applications. TiO2 has also been widely employed as a model system to study basic processes and reactions in surface chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis. In this work, we investigated the (011) surface of rutile TiO2 by focusing on its reconstruction. Density functional theory calculations aided by a genetic algorithm based optimization scheme were performed to extensively sample the potential energy surfaces of reconstructed rutile TiO2 structures that obey (2 × 1) periodicity. A lot of stable surface configurations were located, including the global-minimum configuration that was proposed previously. The wide variety of surface structures determined through the calculations performed in this work provide insight into the relationship between the atomic configuration of a surface and its stability. More importantly, several analytical schemes were proposed and tested to gauge the differences and similarities among various surface structures, aiding the construction of the complete pathway for the reconstruction process.