Fraction Of Hartree-Fock Exchange Research Articles

Density Functional Theory Calculation of the Band Alignment of (101̅0) In(x)Ga(1-x)N/Water Interfaces.

Conduction band edge (CBE) and valence band edge (VBE) positions of InxGa1-xN photoelectrodes were computed using density functional theory methods. The band edges of fully solvated GaN and InN model systems were aligned with respect to the standard hydrogen electrode using a molecular dynamics hydrogen electrode scheme applied earlier to TiO2/water interfaces. Similar to the findings for TiO2, we found that the Purdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional gives a VBE potential which is too negative by 1 V. This cathodic bias is largely corrected by application of the Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhof (HSE06) hybrid functional containing a fraction of Hartree-Fock exchange. The effect of a change of composition was investigated using simplified model systems consisting of vacuum slabs covered on both sides by one monolayer of H2O. The CBE was found to vary linearly with In content. The VBE, in comparison, is much less sensitive to composition. The data show that the band edges straddle the hydrogen and oxygen evolution potentials for In fractions less than 47%. The band gap was found to exceed 2 eV for an In fraction less than 54%.

Spin polarization, orbital occupation and band gap opening in vanadium dioxide: The effect of screened Hartree–Fock exchange

The metal–insulator transition of VO2 so far has evaded an accurate description by density functional theory. The screened hybrid functional of Heyd, Scuseria and Ernzerhof leads to reasonable solutions for both the low-temperature monoclinic and high-temperature rutile phases only if spin polarization is excluded from the calculations. We explore whether a satisfactory agreement with experiment can be achieved by tuning the fraction of Hartree Fock exchange (α) in the density functional. It is found that two branches of locally stable solutions exist for the rutile phase for 12.5%⩽α⩽20%. One is metallic and has the correct stability as compared to the monoclinic phase, the other is insulating with lower energy than the metallic branch. We discuss these observations based on the V 3d orbital occupations and conclude that α=10% is the best possible choice for spin-polarized VO2 calculations.

Constrained density functional theory applied to electron tunnelling between defects in MgO

We employ a periodic plane-wave implementation of constrained density functional theory to describe electron tunnelling between oxygen vacancy defects in MgO. We find that calculated electron transfer parameters, and therefore electron tunnelling rates, depend sensitively on the fraction of Hartree-Fock exchange (HFX) used to approximate the exchange-correlation functional. In particular, we show that the exponential decay constant for electronic coupling (β) is proportional to the square-root of the band gap of MgO. Therefore, it is essential to use an exchange-correlation functional which predicts the correct band gap for accurate prediction of electron tunnelling rates. We also present a scheme for the correction of finite size effects for electronic coupling due to the interaction with periodic images, and discuss the sensitivity of the results with respect to the charge constraint used. The computationally demanding calculations presented in this work have only become feasible owing to recent advances in both computer hardware and code parallelisation and demonstrate that the first principles modelling of long-range electron transfer in wide-gap oxides is now possible.

Quantum Master Equation Method Based on the Broken-Symmetry Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory: Application to Dynamic Polarizability of Open-Shell Molecular Systems

A novel method for the calculation of the dynamic polarizability (α) of open-shell molecular systems is developed based on the quantum master equation combined with the broken-symmetry (BS) time-dependent density functional theory within the Tamm-Dancoff approximation, referred to as the BS-DFTQME method. We investigate the dynamic α density distribution obtained from BS-DFTQME calculations in order to analyze the spatial contributions of electrons to the field-induced polarization and clarify the contributions of the frontier orbital pair to α and its density. To demonstrate the performance of this method, we examine the real part of dynamic α of singlet 1,3-dipole systems having a variety of diradical characters (y). The frequency dispersion of α, in particular in the resonant region, is shown to strongly depend on the exchange-correlation functional as well as on the diradical character. Under sufficiently off-resonant condition, the dynamic α is found to decrease with increasing y and/or the fraction of Hartree-Fock exchange in the exchange-correlation functional, which enhances the spin polarization, due to the decrease in the delocalization effects of π-diradical electrons in the frontier orbital pair. The BS-DFTQME method with the BHandHLYP exchange-correlation functional also turns out to semiquantitatively reproduce the α spectra calculated by a strongly correlated ab initio molecular orbital method, i.e., the spin-unrestricted coupled-cluster singles and doubles.

Absorption and fluorescence properties of oligothiophene biomarkers from long-range-corrected time-dependent density functional theory

The absorption and fluorescence properties in a class of oligothiophene push-pull biomarkers are investigated with a long-range-corrected (LC) density functional method. Using linear-response time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), we calculate excitation energies, fluorescence energies, oscillator strengths, and excited-state dipole moments. To benchmark and assess the quality of the LC-TDDFT formalism, an extensive comparison is made between LC-BLYP excitation energies and approximate coupled cluster singles and doubles (CC2) calculations. When using a properly-optimized value of the range parameter, mu, we find that the LC technique provides an accurate description of charge-transfer excitations as a function of biomarker size and chemical functionalization. In contrast, we find that re-optimizing the fraction of Hartree Fock exchange in conventional hybrid functionals still yields an inconsistent description of excitation energies and oscillator strengths for the two lowest excited states in our series of biomarkers. The results of the present study emphasize the importance of a distance-dependent contribution of exchange in TDDFT for investigating excited-state properties.

SM6: A Density Functional Theory Continuum Solvation Model for Calculating Aqueous Solvation Free Energies of Neutrals, Ions, and Solute-Water Clusters.

A new charge model, called Charge Model 4 (CM4), and a new continuum solvent model, called Solvation Model 6 (SM6), are presented. Using a database of aqueous solvation free energies for 273 neutrals, 112 ions, and 31 ion-water clusters, parameter sets for the mPW0 hybrid density functional of Adamo and Barone (Adamo, C.; Barone, V. J. Chem. Phys. 1998, 108, 664-675) were optimized for use with the following four basis sets: MIDI!6D, 6-31G(d), 6-31+G(d), and 6-31+G(d,p). SM6 separates the observable aqueous solvation free energy into two different components: one arising from long-range bulk electrostatic effects and a second from short-range interactions between the solute and solvent molecules in the first solvation shell. This partition of the observable solvation free energy allows SM6 to effectively model a wide range of solutes. For the 273 neutral solutes in the test set, SM6 achieves an average error of ∼0.50 kcal/mol in the aqueous solvation free energies. For solutes, especially ions, that have highly concentrated regions of charge density, adding an explicit water molecule to the calculation significantly improves the performance of SM6 for predicting solvation free energies. The performance of SM6 was tested against several other continuum models, including SM5.43R and several different implementations of the Polarizable Continuum Model (PCM). For both neutral and ionic solutes, SM6 outperforms all of the models against which it was tested. Also, SM6 is the only model (except for one with an average error 3.4 times larger) that improves when an explicit solvent molecule is added to solutes with concentrated charge densities. Thus, in SM6, unlike the other continuum models tested here, adding one or more explicit solvent molecules to the calculation is an effective strategy for improving the prediction of the aqueous solvation free energies of solutes with strong local solute-solvent interactions. This is important, because local solute-solvent interactions are not specifically accounted for by bulk electrostatics, but modeling these interactions correctly is important for predicting the aqueous solvation free energies of certain solutes. Finally, SM6 retains its accuracy when used in conjunction with the B3LYP and B3PW91 functionals, and in fact the solvation parameters obtained with a given basis set may be used with any good density functional or fraction of Hartree-Fock exchange.