Comparison of van der Waals corrected and sparse-matter density functionals for the metal-free phthalocyanine/gold interface

Abstract

In this paper, we report a systematic study on the effect of different van der Waals dispersion correction methods in conjunction with Density Functional Theory on the adsorption characteristics of a monolayer of metal-free phthalocyanine on Au(111). The chosen dispersion corrections were DFT-D2, the Tkatchenko-Scheffler method with and without self-consistent screening, and four sparse-matter density functionals. A comparison among different dispersion corrections was performed and the results are related to available experimental scanning tunnel microscopy and x-ray standing-wave measurements for similar molecules on Au(111). We found that the Tkatchenko-Scheffler method as well as a sparse-matter density functional which employs the exchange potential of optB86b and the nonlocal correlation of Dion describe the adsorbed system, e.g., electronic and geometric structure with an adsorption distance of $3.3$ \AA{}, reasonably well within moderate computational costs.