Development of Constraint Algorithm for the Number of Electrons in Molecular Orbitals Consisting Mainly 4 f Atomic Orbitals of Rare-Earth Elements and Its Introduction to Tight-Binding Quantum Chemical Molecular Dynamics Method

Abstract

Our original tight-binding quantum chemical molecular dynamics code, “Colors”, has been successfully applied to the theoretical investigation of complex materials including rare-earth elements, e.g., metal catalysts supported on a CeO2 surface. To expand our code so as to obtain a good convergence for the electronic structure of a calculation system including a rare-earth element, we developed a novel algorithm to provide a constraint condition for the number of electrons occupying the selected molecular orbitals that mainly consist of 4 f atomic orbitals of the rare-earth element. This novel algorithm was introduced in Colors. Using Colors, we succeeded in obtaining the classified electronic configurations of the 4 f atomic orbitals of Ce4+ and reduced Ce ions in a CeO2 bulk model with one oxygen defect, which makes it difficult to obtain a good convergence using a conventional first-principles quantum chemical calculation code.