Coupled Cluster Evaluation of the Stability of Atmospheric Acid–Base Clusters with up to 10 Molecules

Abstract

We investigate the utilization of the domain local pair natural orbital coupled cluster (DLPNO-CCSD(T)) method for calculating binding energies of atmospherical molecular clusters. Applied to small complexes of atmospherical relevance we find that the DLPNO method significantly reduces the scatter in the binding energy, which is commonly present in DFT calculations. For medium sized clusters consisting of sulfuric acid and bases the DLPNO method yields a systematic underestimation of the binding energy compared to canonical coupled cluster results. The errors in the DFT binding energies appear to be more random, while the systematic nature of the DLPNO results allows the establishment of a scaling factor, to better mimic the canonical coupled cluster calculations. Based on the trends identified for the small and medium sized systems, we further extend the application of the DLPNO method to large acid - base clusters consisting of up to 10 molecules, which have previously been out of reach with accurate coupled cluster methods. Using the Atmospheric Cluster Dynamics Code (ACDC) we compare the sulfuric acid dimer formation based on the new DLPNO binding energies with previously published RI-CC2/aug-cc-pV(T+d)Z results. We also compare the simulated sulfuric acid dimer concentration as a function of the base concentration with measurement data from the CLOUD chamber and flow tube experiments. The DLPNO method, even after scaling, underpredicts the dimer concentration significantly. Reasons for this are discussed.