The research in storage and conversion of energy is an everlasting process. The use of fuel cells is very tempting but up to now there are still several conceptual challenges to overcome. Especially, the requirement of liquid water causes difficulties due to the temperature limit. Therefore, imidazoles and triazoles are increasingly investigated in a manifold of experimental and theoretical publications as they are both very promising in overcoming this problem. Recently, triazoles were found to be superior to imidazoles in proton conduction. An ab-initio molecular dynamics simulation of pure triazole phases for investigating the behavior of both tautomer species of the triazole molecule has never been done. In this work, we investigate the structural and dynamical properties of two different solid phases and the liquid phase at two different temperatures. We are able to show how the distinct tautomers contribute to the mechanism of proton conduction, to compute dynamical properties of the four systems and to suggest a mechanism of reorientation in solid phase.
Keywords: ab-initio molecular dynamics; crystal structure; diffusion coefficient; fuel cell; hydrogen bond network; pi-pi-stacking; proton conductivity; tautomerism.