Ab initio metadynamics determination of temperature-dependent free-energy landscape in ultrasmall silver clusters.

Abstract

Ab initio metadynamics enables the extraction of free-energy landscapes having the accuracy of first-principles electronic structure methods. We introduce an interface between the PLUMED code that computes free-energy landscapes and enhanced-sampling algorithms and the Atomic Simulation Environment (ASE) module, which includes several ab initio electronic structure codes. The interface is validated with a Lennard-Jones cluster free-energy landscape calculation by averaging multiple short metadynamics trajectories. We use this interface and analysis to estimate the free-energy landscape of Ag5 and Ag6 clusters at 10, 100, and 300K with the radius of gyration and coordination number as collective variables, finding at most tens of meV in error. Relative free-energy differences between the planar and non-planar isomers of both clusters decrease with temperature in agreement with previously proposed stabilization of non-planar isomers. Interestingly, we find that Ag6 is the smallest silver cluster where entropic effects at room temperature boost the non-planar isomer probability to a competing state. The new ASE-PLUMED interface enables simulating nanosystem electronic properties under more realistic temperature-dependent conditions.