Long-range Correction Research Articles

CO2 reduction to acetic acid on the greigite Fe3S4{111} surface.

Acetic acid (CH3-COOH) is an important commodity chemical widely used in a myriad of industrial processes, whose production still largely depends on homogeneous catalysts based on expensive rare metals. Here, we report a computational study on the formation of CH3-COOH from carbon dioxide (CO2) as an alternative chemical feedstock on the {111} surface of the low-cost greigite Fe3S4 catalyst. We have used density functional theory calculations with a Hubbard Hamiltonian approach and long-range dispersion corrections (DFT+U-D2) to simulate the various stages of the direct combination of C1 species of different composition to produce glyoxylic acid (CHO-COOH) as a key intermediate in the formation of CH3-COOH. Three reaction mechanisms are considered: (i) the main pathway where the direct formation of the C-C bond takes place spontaneously, followed by a step-wise reduction of CHO-CHOO to CH3-COOH; and the competitive pathways for the non-promoted and H-promoted elimination of hydroxy groups (OH) and water (H2O), respectively from (ii) the carboxyl; and (iii) the carbonyl end of the glyoxylate intermediates. The thermodynamic and kinetic profiles show that the energies for the intermediates on the main pathway are very similar for the two catalytic sites considered, although the activation energies are somewhat larger for the exposed tetrahedral iron (FeA) ion. In most cases, the intermediates for the deoxygenation of the carboxylic acid are less stable than the intermediates on the main pathway, which suggests that the molecule prefers to lose the carbonylic oxygen. The suitable surface properties of the Fe3S4{111} surface show that this material could be a promising sustainable catalyst in future technologies for the conversion of CO2 into organic acid molecules of commercial interest.

Assessing cathode property prediction via exchange-correlation functionals with and without long-range dispersion corrections.

We benchmark calculated interlayer spacings, average topotactic voltages, thermodynamic stabilities, and band gaps in layered lithium transition-metal oxides (TMOs) and their de-lithiated counterparts, which are used in lithium-ion batteries as positive electrode materials, against available experimental data. Specifically, we examine the accuracy of properties calculated within density functional theory (DFT) using eight different treatments of electron exchange-correlation: the strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) and Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) density functionals, Hubbard-U-corrected SCAN and PBE (i.e., SCAN+U and PBE+U), and SCAN(+U) and PBE(+U) with added long-range dispersion (D) interactions (i.e., DFT(+U)+D). van der Waals interactions are included respectively via the revised Vydrov-Van Voorhis (rVV10) for SCAN(+U) and the DFT-D3 for PBE(+U). We find that SCAN-based functionals predict larger voltages due to an underestimation of stability of the MO2 systems, while also predicting smaller interlayer spacings compared to their PBE-based counterparts. Furthermore, adding dispersion corrections to PBE has a greater effect on voltage predictions and interlayer spacings than with SCAN, indicating that DFT-SCAN - despite being a ground-state theory - fortuitously captures some short and medium-range dispersion interactions better than PBE. While SCAN-based and PBE-based functionals yield qualitatively similar band gap predictions, there is no significant quantitative improvement of SCAN-based functionals over the corresponding PBE-based versions. Finally, we expect SCAN-based functionals to yield more accurate property predictions than the respective PBE-based functionals for most TMOs, given SCAN's stronger theoretical underpinning and better predictions of systematic trends in interlayer spacings, intercalation voltages, and band gaps obtained in this work.

Competitive Adsorption of H2O and SO2 on Catalytic Platinum Surfaces: a Density Functional Theory Study

ABSTRACT Platinum has been widely used as the catalyst of choice for the production of hydrogen in the hybrid sulphur (HyS) cycle. In this cycle, water (H2O) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) react to form sulphuric acid and hydrogen. However, the surface reactivity of platinum towards H2O and SO2 is not yet fully understood, especially considering the competitive adsorption that may occur on the surface. In this study, we have carried out density functional theory calculations with long-range dispersion corrections [DFT-D3-(BJ)] to investigate the competitive effect of both H2O and SO2 on the Pt (001), (011) and (111) surfaces. Comparing the adsorption of a single H2O molecule on the various Pt surfaces, it was found that the lowest adsorption energy (Eads = -1.758 eV) was obtained for the dissociative adsorption of H2O on the (001) surface, followed by the molecular adsorption on the (011) surface (Eads = -0.699 eV) and (111) surface (Eads = -0.464 eV). For the molecular SO2 adsorption, the trend was similar, with the lowest adsorption energy (Eads = -2.471 eV) obtained on the (001) surface, followed by the (011) surface (Eads = -2.390 eV) and (111) surface (Eads = -1.852 eV). During competitive adsorption by H2O and SO2, the SO2 molecule will therefore preferentially adsorb onto the Pt surface. If the concentration of SO2 increases, self-reaction between two neighbouring SO2 molecules may occur, leading to the formation of sulphur monoxide (SO) and -trioxide (SO3) on the surface, which could lead to sulphur poisoning of the Pt catalytic surface. Keywords: Platinum, water, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen, adsorption, density functional theory.

Assessment of long-range corrected density functional theory on the absorption and vibrationally resolved fluorescence spectrum of carbon nanobelts.

Time-dependent (TD) density functional theory (DFT) and Franck-Condon Hertzberg-Teller (FCHT) calculations of various DFT functionals [B3LYP, CAM-B3LYP, ωB97XD, and optimally tuned (OT) long-range corrected (LC)-BLYP] were performed to examine how well DFT functionals can predict the experimental absorption and fluorescence spectra of a 12-carbon nanobelt (CNB). OT-LC-BLYP reproduced the experimental absorption spectrum well in terms of the peak position and intensity in the case of using a basis set with a diffuse function, such as 6-31+G(d,p) and 6-311+G(d,p), whereas B3LYP showed a red-shift in the peak positions and CAM-B3LYP and ωB97XD, which have a long-range HF exchange, showed blue shifts. Regarding the fluorescence spectrum calculations with FCHT using 6-311+G(d,p), the OT-LC-BLYP reproduced both the peak intensities and positions closest to the experimental spectrum. B3LYP, however, showed red-shifted peaks, and ωB97XD showed blue-shifted peaks. CAM-B3LYP provided less blue-shifted peaks, but the relative peak intensities mismatched the experimental ones. Furthermore, calculations of the absorption and vibrationally resolved fluorescence spectra of 16-CNB and 24-CNB using OT-LC-BLYP/6-311+G(d,p) showed absorption and fluorescence spectra close to the experimental spectra with high accuracy. Moreover, the application of a polarizable continuum model (dichloromethane) produced a red shift in the peak positions of the absorption spectrum with increasing intensity but an increase in the peak intensities of the fluorescence calculations without shifting the peak position.

DFT study of cyclic glycine-alanine dipeptide binding to gold nanoclusters

In this work, we studied the interactions between cyclic glycine-alanine dipeptide c(GA) and gold nanoclusters (AunNCs, where n = 2–10) using density functional theory (DFT), atoms-in-molecules theory (AIM), and natural bond orbital analysis (NBO). This dipeptide (DP) consists of two amino acid residues (glycine and alanine); thus, the preference of both residues for binding to gold atoms was examined. The preference of alanine residue to the studied AunNCs was found to be greater than that of glycine residue. Two types of interactions were exhibited between the AunNCs and c(GA), the partially-covalent partially-electrostatic type and electrostatic interaction. Performance of two DFT functionals and different basis sets is assessed. The results benchmark the importance of the DFT functional with dispersion and long-range corrections, as well as the polarization functions in the basis sets for the gold lusters-peptide binding. The binding energy (ΔEbind) values of the c(GA)−AunNCs complexes in gas and water implicit solvent were compared with those previously published for cyclic glycine-glycine DP−AunNCs complexes. It was found that the ΔEbind values of the former complexes are greater than those of latter ones in water solvent.

Core-Level Excitation Energies of Nucleic Acid Bases Expressed as Orbital Energies of the Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory with Long-Range Corrected Functionals.

The core electron binding energies (CEBEs) and core-level excitation energies of thymine, adenine, cytosine, and uracil are studied by the Kohn-Sham (KS) method with long-range corrected (LC) functionals. The CEBEs are estimated according to the Koopmans-type theorem for density functional theory. The excitation energies from the core to the valence π* and Rydberg states are calculated as the orbital energy differences between core-level orbitals of a neutral parent/cation and unoccupied π* or Rydberg orbitals of its cation. The model is intuitive, and the spectra can easily be assigned. Core excitation energies from oxygen 1s, nitrogen 1s, and carbon 1s to π* and Rydberg states, and the chemical shifts, agree well with previously reported theoretical and experimental data. The straightforward use of KS orbitals in this scheme carries the advantage that it can be applied efficiently to large systems such as biomolecules and nanomaterials.

Quantum Mechanics/Extremely Localized Molecular Orbital Embedding Strategy for Excited States: Coupling to Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory and Equation-of-Motion Coupled Cluster.

The QM/ELMO (quantum mechanics/extremely localized molecular orbital) method is a recently developed embedding technique in which the most important region of the system under examination is treated at fully quantum mechanical level, while the rest is described by means of transferred and frozen extremely localized molecular orbitals. In this paper, we propose the first application of the QM/ELMO approach to the investigation of excited states, and, in particular, we present the coupling of the QM/ELMO philosophy with Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory (TDDFT) and Equation-of-Motion Coupled Cluster with single and double substitutions (EOM-CCSD). The proposed TDDFT/ELMO and EOM-CCSD/ELMO strategies underwent a series of preliminary tests that were already considered for the validation of other embedding methods for excited states. The obtained results showed that the novel techniques allow the accurate description of localized excitations in large systems by only including a relatively small number of atoms in the region treated at fully quantum chemical level. Furthermore, for TDDFT/ELMO, it was also observed that (i) the method enables to avoid the presence of artificial low-lying charge-transfer states that may affect traditional TDDFT calculations, even using functionals that do not take into account long-range corrections, and (ii) the novel approach can be also successfully exploited to investigate local electronic transitions in quite large systems (e.g., reduced model of the Green Fluorescent Protein), and the accuracy of the results can be improved by including a sufficient number of chemically crucial fragments/residues in the quantum mechanical region. Finally, concerning EOM-CCSD/ELMO, it was also seen that, despite the quite crude approximation of an embedding potential given by frozen extremely localized molecular orbitals, the new strategy is able to satisfactorily account for the effects of the environment. This work paves the way to further extensions of the QM/ELMO philosophy for the study of local excitations in extended systems, suggesting the coupling of the QM/ELMO approach with other quantum chemical strategies for excited states, from the simplest ΔSCF techniques to the most advanced and computationally expensive multireferences methods.

Theoretical investigation of solvent effect on the keto–enol tautomerization of pentane-2,4-dione and a comparison between experimental data and theoretical calculations

The equilibrium constants of stable keto and enol forms of pentane-2,4-dione (known as acetylacetone) are estimated, using the second-order Møller−Plesset (MP2), density functional theory (B3LYP and M06-2X), composite methods (G4, G3, G3B3, CBS-QB3, and G3MP2B3), double-hybrid density functional theory (B2PLYP), and long-range corrected (LC) hybrid functional (ωB97X-D). These methods are integrated with the PCM, CPCM, and SMD models to elucidate the effect of solvent on thermodynamic parameters. The reported measured enol contents in the solutions and gas phase are utilized to benchmark the predictions of different quantum mechanical methods for the keto–enol equilibrium in acetylacetone. In this study, we calculated the enol content in 16 acetylacetone solutions and in the gas phase. Among the applied methods, the MP2 level and the B3LYP level underestimate and overestimate, respectively, the enol content of acetylacetone in the gas phase and solutions. The G3B3 and G3MP2B3 levels give reasonable agreement with the measured data. The best results obtained by calculations at the B2PLYP/6-31+G(2d,p) and CBS-QB3 levels, with mean absolute errors (MAE) relative to experiments of 2.30 and 5.45 and root mean square deviation (RMSD) errors of 0.78 and 1.66, respectively. According to our calculations, one enol and two keto forms (Ket1 and Ket2) coexist in polar solutions. The effect of solvent was more pronounced on the structure and stability of the Ket2 tautomer than others. The strength of the intramolecular hydrogen bond in the enol form of acetylacetone is almost independent of the solvent polarity.

Fenton reaction mechanism generating no OH radicals in Nafion membrane decomposition

Mechanism of Fenton reaction, which is a most widely-used degradation test for organic materials using hydrogen peroxide (H_2O_2) and iron (Fe) cations, is revealed for the decomposition of hydrated Nafion membrane. This reaction mechanism has been assumed to generate OH radicals. For a doubly-hydrated Nafion membrane model, Fenton reaction with divalent and monovalent Fe (Fe^{2+} and Fe^+) cation hydration complexes is explored for experimentally-supported hydration numbers using long-range correction for density functional theory. As a result, it is found that H_2O_2 coordinating to the Fe^{2+} hydration complexes first approaches Nafion side chains in high humidity, then leads to the C–S bond dissociation of the side chain to produce carbonic acid group and sulfonic acid ion. On the other hand, once electron transfer proceeds between iron ions, the O–O bond of the coordinating H_2O_2 is extended, then the C–S bond is dissociated to produce trihydroxymethyl group and sulfur trioxide, which are rapidly transformed to carboxyl group and sulfonic acid ion in aquo. This mechanism is confirmed by the vibrational spectrum analysis of the decomposed product. Collective Nafion decomposition mechanisms also suggest that the decomposition reaction uses the recycle of generated Fe cation hydration complexes under acidic condition near membrane surface.

UV/Vis absorption spectrum calculations of benzo-1,2-dipyrene isomer using long-range corrected density functional theory

Anti- and syn-isomers of benzo-1,2-dipyrene were synthesized, and nonidentical experimental absorption spectra were observed. The B3LYP, B3LYP-D3, ωB97XD, and optimally tuned long-range corrected (LC) BOP functionals were assessed. B3LYP and B3LYP-D3 underestimated and ωB97XD overestimated the fundamental gaps and their following optical gaps in both isomers. The LC-BOP functional with the range separation parameter (µ=0.18) using the geometries optimized with LCgau-BOP + LRD reproduced the experimental absorption spectra of both isomers well. Therefore, in the case of the absorption spectrum calculation of the excimer-like isomers, it is significant to include both the weak interaction term and long-range Hartree-Fock exchange interaction appropriately.

Charge-Transfer Excitation Energies Expressed as Orbital Energies of Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory with Long-Range Corrected Functionals.

Previously proposed theoretical schemes for estimating one-electron excitation energies using Kohn-Sham (KS) solutions with long-range corrected (LC) functionals are applied to the charge-transfer (CT) excitations of the ethylene···tetrafluoroethylene (C2H4-C2F4) system, and the CT complex between an aromatic donor (Ar = benzene, toluene, o-xylene, naphthalene, anthracene, and various meso-substituted anthracenes) and the tetracyanoethylene (TCNE) acceptor. The CT excited state is described well as a single-electron excitation between specific orbitals of donor and acceptor. Thus, CT excitation energies are well approximated by the orbital energies because of the satisfaction of the Koopmans-type theorem and the asymptotic behavior of the LC functional. We have examined three computational schemes: scheme 1 employs the orbital energies for the neutral and cationic systems, scheme 2 utilizes orbital energies of just the cation, and in scheme 3, because the electron affinity of a molecule is the ionization energy of its anion, a scale factor is applied to enforce this identity. The present schemes reproduce the correct asymptotic behavior of CT excitation energy of C2H4···C2F4 for the long intermolecular distances and give good agreement with accurate ab initio results. Calculated CT excitation energies for Ar-TCNE are compared with those of TD-DFT and ΔSCF methods. Scheme 1 with the optimal range-separation parameter μ accurately reproduces CT excitation energies for all Ar-TCNE systems and gives good agreement with the best TD-DFT calculations and experiment. Scheme 1, scheme 3, and TD-DFT show similar tendencies with respect to the variation in μ. Scheme 2 and ΔSCF approaches are rather insensitive to changes in μ, but both considerably underestimate the CT excitation energies for these systems. KS orbital energies are physically meaningful and they are practically useful; if the range-separation parameter is tuned, then good results can be obtained.

Towards understanding the interaction of (S)-thalidomide with nucleobases

Interaction of (S)-thalidomide molecule with four nucleobases: adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine, is investigated in details employing density functional theory methods. Different mutual positions of the molecules are considered, with the starting geometries enabling hydrogen bond interactions between the monomers. Optimization of geometrical parameters is carried out within the B3LYP/6-311G** approximation and followed by evaluation of vibrational frequencies. Binding and interaction energies are calculated employing exchange-correlation functionals including long-range corrections and properly diffuse basis sets. The strongest interaction exists within the (S)-thalidomide–guanine complex. Interestingly, in one of the investigated (S)-thalidomide–guanine complexes two bifurcated hydrogen bonds are observed. The two hydrogens involved in one of them are bonded to a carbon atom in the α position relative to carbonyl group. The present study can be useful in the design of new anticancer and antiviral drugs interacting selectively with DNA or RNA.

Thermal smearing in DFT calculations: How small is really small? A case of La and Lu atoms adsorbed on graphene

The thermal smearing is an efficient tool to accelerate self-consistent field (SCF) convergence, and therefore widely employed in the modern computational materials science. One of the values most frequently used is 0.005 Ha. However, the fact that its equivalent temperature of 1578.9 K goes far beyond conditions of the very stability for most systems studied in the conventional materials science rises concerns on credibility of the data obtained. In the present report, we studied the effect of variable smearing values on different calculated parameters of selected lanthanide atoms (Ln = La and Lu) interacting with cluster and periodic graphene models, using Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional in conjunction with the empirical long-range dispersion correction by Grimme. In the cluster calculations for the La and Lu complexes with the supercoronene model for graphene, only the use of thermal smearing of the order of 10−4 Ha or below (down to Fermi occupancy) can yield convergent total energies, Ln…C interatomic distances, charge and spin of Ln atom, spin density and HOMO-LUMO plots. The results of periodic calculations were less sensitive to the choice of the smearing value. In this case, the smearing values at which convergent results can be obtained for total energies, Ln…C interatomic distances, charge and spin of Ln atom, as well as DOS plots are from 0.00004 to 0.001 Ha. In both cluster and periodic calculations, the value of 0.005 Ha was too high for reliable computed parameters to be obtained.

Efficient yet accurate dispersion-corrected semilocal exchange-correlation functionals for non-covalent interactions.

The meta-generalized-gradient approximation (meta-GGA) of the exchange-correlation energy functional can provide appealing performance for the wide range of quantum chemistry and solid-state properties. So far, several meta-GGAs are proposed by fitting to the test sets or/and satisfying as many as known exact constraints. Although the density overlap is treated by meta-GGA functionals efficiently, for non-covalent interactions, a long-range dispersion correction is essential. In this work, we assess the benchmark performance of different variants of the Tao-Mo meta-GGA semilocal functional, i.e., TM [J. Tao and Y. Mo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 073001 (2016)] and revTM [S. Jana, K. Sharma, and P. Samal, J. Phys. Chem. A 123, 6356 (2019)], with Grimme's D3 correction for several non-covalent interactions, including hydrogen-bonded systems. We consider the zero, Becke-Johnson (BJ), and optimized power (OP) damping functions within the D3 method with both TM and revTM functionals. It is observed that the overall performance of the functionals gradually improved from zero to BJ and to OP damping. However, the constructed "OP" corrected (rev)TM + D3(OP) functionals perform considerably better compared to other well-known dispersion corrected functionals. Based on the accuracy of the proposed functionals, the future applicability of these methods is also discussed.

Assessing the Tamm-Dancoff approximation, singlet-singlet, and singlet-triplet excitations with the latest long-range corrected double-hybrid density functionals.

We continue our work on the long-range corrected double-hybrid density functionals (LC-DHDFs) ωB2PLYP and ωB2GP-PLYP that we developed in the context of time-dependent (TD) Density Functional Theory (DFT) to enable the robust description of singlet-singlet excitations [M. Casanova-Páez, M. B. Dardis, and L. Goerigk, J. Chem. Theory Comput. 15, 4735 (2019)]. In our initial study, we only assessed the impact of a LC on BLYP-based DHDFs, and herein, we extend our understanding by providing the first test of PBE-based LC-DHDFs within the established TD-DHDF scheme. Moreover, this study is one of few that provides a direct comparison between TD-DHDFs and their faster Tamm-Dancoff-approximation variants (TDA-DHDFs). Most importantly, this is the first TDA-DHDF study since Grimme and Neese's TDA-B2PLYP [J. Chem. Phys. 127, 154116 (2007)] and the first work on TD-DHDFs that addresses singlet-triplet excitations. We show how the difference between TD-DHDFs and TDA-DHDFs is often negligible for singlet-singlet excitations, but how one has to apply TDA-DHDFs for triplet excitations. For both excitation types, the LC is beneficial to the BLYP-based DHDFs, but detrimental to the PBE-based ones. For local-valence and Rydberg excitations, ωB2PLYP and ωB2GP-PLYP as well as the global DHDF PBE-QIDH can be recommended. If a transition exhibits charge-transfer character, ωB2PLYP and ωB2GP-PLYP should be applied. An analysis of the gaps between the first singlet and triplet excited states of our systems revealed that there is room for further improvements to reach better robustness. Until that goal has been achieved, we recommend ωB2PLYP and ωB2GP-PLYP as some of the currently best TDA-DFT methods.

Electronic investigation and spectroscopic analysis using DFT with the long-range dispersion correction on the six lowest conformers of 2.2.3-trimethyl pentane.

The conformational stability and internal rotation barriers, HOMO-LUMO gap and related properties, molecular static polarizability and hyperpolarizability parameters, and the NBO delocalization energies associated with the internal charge transfer (ICT) of 2.2.3-trimethylpentane in the ground state were carried out taking into account the long range dispersion correction through CAM-B3LYP and WB97XD levels at aug-cc-pvtz basis set. The six lowest conformations were differentiated by a deep and multiple spectroscopic investigation. The ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) absorption bands are assigned using molecular orbital data obtained by TD-WB97XD/aug-cc-pvtz calculations, and carbon 13C NMR signal peaks have been assigned using GIAO-WB97XD/aug-cc-pvtz method. In addition, the normal mode calculations of the most and less stable conformers using a scaled force field in terms of non-redundant local symmetry coordinates have been confronted to the experimental vibrational spectra temperature dependency.

Different bonding type along each crystallographic axis: Computational study of poly( p -phenylene terephthalamide)

Poly($p$-phenylene terephthalamide) (PPTA) exhibits van der Waals (vdW) bonding along its $a$ axis, hydrogen bonding along its $b$ axis, and covalent bonding along its $c$ axis. We explore the structural and mechanical properties of PPTA using density functional theory with various functionals including LDA, PBE, PBE+rVV10L, SCAN, and SCAN+rVV10, compared with available experiments. The hierarchy of nonempirical semilocal functionals LDA, PBE, and SCAN (not fitted to any multicenter bonded system) includes differing amounts of intermediate-range vdW interaction. rVV10 is the long-range vdW correction. (rVV10L differs from rVV10 only in the value of a range parameter.) Among the tested functionals, SCAN shows the best performance for the lattice parameters of PPTA along the two crystal directions involving vdW or hydrogen-bond interaction. The equilibrium lattice constants obtained by SCAN and PBE+rVV10L are closest to experimental data, while SCAN+rVV10 slightly overbinds the system. We study the mechanical response of PPTA by applying strain along three lattice directions. Due to the inclusion of vdW interaction, SCAN, PBE+rVV10L, and SCAN+rVV10 all exhibit correct bonding strain-energy curves. On the contrary, PBE strongly underestimates the vdW interaction needed to resist uniaxial stretching along the $a$ axis. The Young's modulus and yield strength of PPTA are computed and compared with previous results. The experimental values are much smaller than the computed ones, mainly due to the fact that the PPTA fiber samples used for measurements are mechanically weaker than the perfect molecular crystals considered in the simulations. Interestingly, when a compressive uniaxial stress of 25 Kbar is applied along the $b$ axis, a structural phase transition, in which the hydrogen bonds reform along one diagonal of the $ab$ rectangle, is predicted by SCAN.

Screened Range-Separated Hybrid Functional with Polarizable Continuum Model Overcomes Challenges in Describing Triplet Excitations in the Condensed Phase Using TDDFT.

Long range-corrected (LRC) or range-separated hybrid (RSH) functionals where the long-range (LR) limit of electronic interactions is set to the exact exchange have been shown to correct the tendency of traditional density functional theory (DFT) to underestimate the frontier orbital gap. Consequently, the use of such functionals in calculating electronic excited states using linear response based time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) has been successful in correcting the tendency for underestimating the energies of charge transfer states by DFT-based calculations. More recently formulations of functionals that attenuate the LR limit to address condensed-phase effects to polarize the electronic density have been reported. In particular screened RSH (SRSH) combined with polarizable continuum model (PCM) was benchmarked successfully in reproducing the fundamental gap and charge transfer state energies of molecular systems in the condensed phase. Here we use SRSH-PCM to address triplet excited states, and show its success in obtaining correspondence of the low-lying triplet states to the singlet-triplet gap in a similar way that the fundamental orbital gap corresponds to electron removal and addition energies. Importantly, the accuracy of the SRSH-PCM in calculating triplet excitations stands on the polarization consistent framework in addressing the scalar dielectric constant and without affecting the optimal tuning by triplet energies. The prospect of even further improving the SRSH-PCM accuracy in calculating triplet states can be achieved by optimal tuning on the basis of the spin multiplicity gap.

Spin-flip approach within time-dependent density functional tight-binding method: Theory and applications.

A spin-flip time-dependent density functional tight-binding (SF-TDDFTB) method is developed that describes target states as spin-flipping excitation from a high-spin reference state obtained by the spin-restricted open shell treatment. Furthermore, the SF-TDDFTB formulation is extended to long-range correction (LC), denoted as SF-TDLCDFTB. The LC technique corrects the overdelocalization of electron density in systems such as charge-transfer systems, which is typically found in conventional DFTB calculations as well as density functional theory calculations using pure functionals. The numerical assessment of the SF-TDDFTB method shows smooth potential curves for the bond dissociation of hydrogen fluoride and the double-bond rotation of ethylene and the double-cone shape of H3 as the simplest degenerate systems. In addition, numerical assessments of SF-TDDFTB and SF-TDLCDFTB for 39 S0 /S1 minimum energy conical intersection (MECI) structures are performed. The SF-TDDFTB and SF-TDLCDFTB methods drastically reduce the computational cost with accuracy for MECI structures compared with SF-TDDFT.

Use of a New Size-Weighted Combining Rule to Predict Adsorption in Siliceous Zeolites

The results of extensive grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations of adsorption in siliceous zeolites are reported and used to assess the accuracy of a size-weighted (SW) combining rule for Lennard-Jones cross-parameters. Adsorption isotherms, Henry’s Law constants, and isosteric heats were computed for 45 different systems consisting of unary, binary, ternary, and quaternary mixtures of light hydrocarbons in silicalite, pure methanol, and carbon dioxide in silicalite and light hydrocarbons in siliceous forms of the zeolites TON, LTA, and CHA. A comparison is made with the conventional Lorentz–Berthelot (LB) combining rule as well as other force fields and experimental data. In addition, the influence of intramolecular scaling methods and long-range tail corrections on computed properties was evaluated. Overall, the SW combining rule gives similar, and sometimes superior, results when compared to the LB combining rule as well as force fields tuned to experimental data.