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At least 433 records · Page 24

Simulated field-modulated x-ray absorption in titania

Here, we present a method to compute the x-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectra of solid-state transition metal oxides using real-time time-dependent density functional theory, including spin–orbit coupling effects. This was performed on bulk-mimicking anatase titania (TiO 2 ) clusters, which allows for the use of hybrid functionals and atom-centered all electron basis sets. Furthermore, this method was employed to calculate the shifts in the XANES spectra of the Ti L-edge in the presence of applied electric fields to understand how external fields can modify the electronic structure, and how this can be probed using x-ray absorption spectroscopy. Specifically, the onset of t 2g peaks in the Ti L-edge was observed to red shift and the e g peaks were observed to blue shift with increasing fields, attributed to changes in the hybridization of the conduction band (3d) orbitals.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

PyFLOSIC: Python-based Fermi–Löwdin orbital self-interaction correction

We present pyflosic, an open-source, general-purpose python implementation of the Fermi–Löwdin orbital self-interaction correction (FLO-SIC), which is based on the python simulation of chemistry framework (pyscf) electronic structure and quantum chemistry code. Thanks to pyscf, pyflosic can be used with any kind of Gaussian-type basis set, various kinds of radial and angular quadrature grids, and all exchange-correlation functionals within the local density approximation, generalized-gradient approximation (GGA), and meta-GGA provided in the libxc and xcfun libraries. A central aspect of FLO-SIC is the Fermi-orbital descriptors, which are used to estimate the self-interaction correction. Importantly, they can be initialized automatically within pyflosic; they can also be optimized within pyflosic with an interface to the atomic simulation environment, a python library that provides a variety of powerful gradient-based algorithms for geometry optimization. Although pyflosic has already facilitated applications of FLO-SIC to chemical studies, it offers an excellent starting point for further developments in FLO-SIC approaches, thanks to its use of a high-level programming language and pronounced modularity.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Range-separated stochastic resolution of identity: Formulation and application to second-order Green’s function theory

We develop a range-separated stochastic resolution of identity (RS-SRI) approach for the four-index electron repulsion integrals, where the larger terms (above a predefined threshold) are treated using a deterministic RI and the remaining terms are treated using a SRI. The approach is implemented within a second-order Green’s function formalism with an improved O(N 3 ) scaling with the size of the basis set, N. Moreover, the RS approach greatly reduces the statistical error compared to the full stochastic version [T. Y. Takeshita et al., J. Chem. Phys. 151, 044114 (2019)], resulting in computational speedups of ground and excited state energies of nearly two orders of magnitude, as demonstrated for hydrogen dimer chains and water clusters.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

How good are polarizable and flexible models for water: Insights from a many-body perspective

We present a systematic analysis of state-of-the-art polarizable and flexible water models from a many-body perspective, with a specific focus on their ability to represent the Born–Oppenheimer potential energy surface of water from the gas to the liquid phase. Using coupled cluster data in the completed basis set limit as a reference, we examine the accuracy of the polarizable models in reproducing individual many-body contributions to interaction energies and harmonic frequencies of water clusters and compare their performance with that of MB-pol, an explicit many-body model that has been shown to correctly predict the properties of water across the entire phase diagram. Based on these comparisons, we use MB-pol as a reference to analyze the ability of the polarizable models to reproduce the energy landscape of liquid water under ambient conditions. We find that, while correctly reproducing the energetics of minimum-energy structures, the polarizable models examined in this study suffer from inadequate representations of many-body effects for distorted configurations. To investigate the role played by geometry-dependent representations of 1-body charge distributions in reproducing coupled cluster data for both interaction and many-body energies, we introduce a simplified version of MB-pol that adopts fixed atomic charges and demonstrate that the new model retains the same accuracy as the original MB-pol model. Based on the analyses presented in this study, we believe that future developments of both polarizable and explicit many-body models should continue in parallel and would benefit from synergistic efforts aimed at integrating the best aspects of the two theoretical/computational frameworks.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Binding and excitations in Si x H y molecular systems using quantum Monte Carlo

In this work, we present high-accuracy correlated calculations of small SixHy molecular systems in both the ground and excited states. We employ quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) together with a variety of many-body wave function approaches based on basis set expansions. The calculations are carried out in a valence-only framework using recently derived correlation consistent effective core potentials. Our primary goal is to understand the fixed-node diffusion QMC errors in both the ground and excited states with single-reference trial wave functions. Using a combination of methods, we demonstrate the very high accuracy of the QMC atomization energies being within ≈0.07 eV or better when compared with essentially exact results. By employing proper choices for trial wave functions, we have found that the fixed-node QMC biases for total energies are remarkably uniform ranging between 1% and 3.5% with absolute values at most ≈0.2 eV across the systems and several types of excitations such as singlets and triplets as well as low-lying and Rydberg-like states. Our results further corroborate that Si systems, and presumably also related main group IV and V elements of the periodic table (Ge, Sn, etc), exhibit some of the lowest fixed-node biases found in valence-only electronic structure QMC calculations.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Too big, too small, or just right? A benchmark assessment of density functional theory for predicting the spatial extent of the electron density of small chemical systems

Multipole moments are the first-order responses of the energy to spatial derivatives of the electric field strength. The quality of density functional theory prediction of molecular multipole moments thus characterizes errors in modeling the electron density itself, as well as the performance in describing molecules interacting with external electric fields. However, only the lowest non-zero moment is translationally invariant, making the higher-order moments origin-dependent. Therefore, instead of using the 3 × 3 quadrupole moment matrix, we utilize the translationally invariant 3 × 3 matrix of second cumulants (or spatial variances) of the electron density as the quantity of interest (denoted by K). The principal components of K are the square of the spatial extent of the electron density along each axis. A benchmark dataset of the principal components of K for 100 small molecules at the coupled cluster singles and doubles with perturbative triples at the complete basis set limit is developed, resulting in 213 independent K components. The performance of 47 popular and recent density functionals is assessed against this Var213 dataset. Several functionals, especially double hybrids, and also SCAN and SCAN0 predict reliable second cumulants, although some modern, empirically parameterized functionals yield more disappointing performance. The H, Li, and Be atoms, in particular, are challenging for nearly all methods, indicating that future functional development could benefit from the inclusion of their density information in training or testing protocols.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Stochastic evaluation of fourth-order many-body perturbation energies

A scalable, stochastic algorithm evaluating the fourth-order many-body perturbation (MP4) correction to energy is proposed. Three hundred Goldstone diagrams representing the MP4 correction are computer generated and then converted into algebraic formulas expressed in terms of Green’s functions in real space and imaginary time. They are evaluated by the direct (i.e., non-Markov, non-Metropolis) Monte Carlo (MC) integration accelerated by the redundant-walker and control-variate algorithms. The resulting MC-MP4 method is efficiently parallelized and is shown to display O(n 5.3 ) size-dependence of cost, which is nearly two ranks lower than the O(n 7 ) dependence of the deterministic MP4 algorithm. Furthermore, it evaluates the MP4/aug-cc-pVDZ energy for benzene, naphthalene, phenanthrene, and corannulene with the statistical uncertainty of 10 mE h (1.1% of the total basis-set correlation energy), 38 mE h (2.6%), 110 mE h (5.5%), and 280 mE h (9.0%), respectively, after about 10 9 MC steps.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

57Fe Mössbauer isomer shift of pure iron and iron oxides at high pressure—An experimental and theoretical study

The 57Fe isomer shift (IS) of pure iron has been measured up to 100 GPa using synchrotron Mössbauer spectroscopy in the time domain. Apart from the expected discontinuity due to the α→ε structural and spin transitions, the IS decreases monotonically with increasing pressure. The absolute shifts were reproduced without semi-empirical calibrations by periodic density functional calculations employing extensive localized basis sets with several common density functionals. However, the best numerical agreement is obtained with the B1WC hybrid functional. Extension of the calculations to 350 GPa, a pressure corresponding to the Earth’s inner core, predicted the IS range of 0.00 to -0.85 mm/s, covering the span from Fe(0) to Fe(VI) compounds measured at ambient pressure. The calculations also reproduced the pressure trend from polymorphs of prototypical iron oxide minerals, FeO and Fe2O3. Analysis of the electronic structure shows a strong donation of electrons from oxygen to iron at high pressure. The assignment of formal oxidation to the Fe atom becomes ambiguous under this condition.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Spin-free formulation of the multireference driven similarity renormalization group: A benchmark study of first-row diatomic molecules and spin-crossover energetics

We report a spin-free formulation of the multireference (MR) driven similarity renormalization group (DSRG) based on the ensemble normal ordering of Mukherjee and Kutzelnigg (1997). This ensemble averages over all microstates of a given total spin quantum number, and therefore, it is invariant with respect to SU(2) transformations. As such, all equations may be reformulated in terms of spin-free quantities and they closely resemble those of spin-adapted closed-shell coupled cluster (CC) theory. The current implementation is used to assess the accuracy of various truncated MR-DSRG methods (perturbation theory up to third order and iterative methods with single and double excitations) in computing the constants of 33 first-row diatomic molecules. The accuracy trends for these first-row diatomics are consistent with our previous benchmark on a small subset of closed-shell diatomic molecules. We then present the first MR-DSRG application on transition-metal complexes by computing the spin splittings of the [Fe(H 2 O) 6 ] 2+ and [Fe(NH 3 ) 6 ] 2+ molecules. A focal point analysis (FPA) shows that third-order perturbative corrections are essential to achieve reasonably converged energetics. The FPA based on the linearized MR-DSRG theory with one- and two-body operators and up to a quintuple- ζ basis set predicts the spin splittings of [Fe(H 2 O) 6 ] 2+ and [Fe(NH 3 ) 6 ] 2+ to be –35.7 and –17.1 kcal mol –1 , respectively, showing good agreement with the results of local CC theory with singles, doubles, and perturbative triples.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Geometry optimization speedup through a geodesic approach to internal coordinates

We present a new geodesic-based method for geometry optimization in a basis set of redundant internal coordinates. Overall, our method updates the molecular geometry by following the geodesic generated by a displacement vector on the internal coordinate manifold, which dramatically reduces the number of steps required to converge to a minimum. Our method can be implemented in any existing optimization code, requiring only implementation of derivatives of the Wilson B-matrix and the ability to numerically solve an ordinary differential equation.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Elaborated thermochemical treatment of HF, CO, N 2 , and H 2 O: Insight into HEAT and its extensions

Here, empirical, highly accurate non-relativistic electronic total atomization energies (eTAEs) are established by combining experimental or computationally converged treatments of the nuclear motion and relativistic contributions with the total atomization energies of HF, CO, N 2 , and H 2 O obtained from the Active Thermochemical Tables. These eTAEs, which have estimated (2σ) uncertainties of less than 10 cm -1 (0.12 kJ mol -1 ), form the basis for an analysis of high-level ab initio quantum chemical calculations that aim at reproducing these eTAEs for the title molecules. The results are then employed to analyze the performance of the high-accuracy extrapolated ab initio thermochemistry, or High-Accuracy Extrapolated Ab Initio Thermochemistry (HEAT), family of theoretical methods. The method known as HEAT-345(Q), in particular, is found to benefit from fortuitous error cancellation between its treatment of the zero-point energy, extrapolation errors in the Hartree-Fock and coupled cluster contributions, neglect of post-(T) core-correlation, and the basis-set error involved in higher-level correlation corrections. In addition to shedding light on a longstanding curiosity of the HEAT protocol—where the cheapest HEAT-345(Q) performs comparably to the theoretically more complete HEAT-456QP procedure—this study lays the foundation for extended HEAT variants that offer substantial improvements in accuracy relative to the established approaches.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

The many-body electronic interactions of Fe(II)–porphyrin

Fe(II)–porphyrin complexes exhibit a diverse range of electronic interactions between the metal and macrocycle. Herein, the incremental full configuration interaction method is applied to the entire space of valence orbitals of a Fe(II)–porphyrin model using a modest basis set. A novel visualization framework is proposed to analyze individual many-body contributions to the correlation energy, providing detailed maps of this complex’s highly correlated electronic structure. Furthermore, this technique is used to parse the numerous interactions of two low-lying triplet states ( 3 A 2 g and 3 E g ) and to show that strong metal d–d and macrocycle π–π orbital interactions preferentially stabilize the 3 A 2 g state. d–π interactions, on the other hand, preferentially stabilize the 3 E g state and primarily appear when correlating six electrons at a time. Ultimately, the Fe(II)–porphyrin model’s full set of 88 valence electrons are correlated in 275 orbitals, showing the interactions up to the 4-body level, which covers the great majority of correlations in this system.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Understanding the chemical bonding of ground and excited states of HfO and HfB with correlated wavefunction theory and density functional approximations

Knowledge of the chemical bonding of HfO and HfB ground and low-lying electronic states provides essential insights into a range of catalysts and materials that contain Hf–O or Hf–B moieties. Here, we carry out high-level multi-reference configuration interaction theory and coupled cluster quantum chemical calculations on these systems. We compute full potential energy curves, excitation energies, ionization energies, electronic configurations, and spectroscopic parameters with large quadruple-ζ and quintuple-ζ quality correlation consistent basis sets. We also investigate equilibrium chemical bonding patterns and effects of correlating core electrons on property predictions. Differences in the ground state electron configuration of HfB(X 4 Σ - ) and HfO(X 1 Σ + ) lead to a significantly stronger bond in HfO than HfB, as judged by both dissociation energies and equilibrium bond distances. We extend our analysis to the chemical bonding patterns of the isovalent HfX (X = O, S, Se, Te, and Po) series and observe similar trends. We also note a linear trend between the decreasing value of the dissociation energy (D e ) from HfO to HfPo and the singlet–triplet energy gap (ΔE S–T ) of the molecule. Finally, we compare these benchmark results to those obtained using density functional theory (DFT) with 23 exchange–correlation functionals spanning multiple rungs of “Jacob’s ladder.” When comparing DFT errors to coupled cluster reference values on dissociation energies, excitation energies, and ionization energies of HfB and HfO, we observe semi-local generalized gradient approximations to significantly outperform more complex and high-cost functionals.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Electronic structure theory on modeling short-range noncovalent interactions between amino acids

While short-range noncovalent interactions (NCIs) are proving to be of importance in many chemical and biological systems, these atypical bindings happen within the so-called van der Waals envelope and pose an enormous challenge for current computational methods. We introduce SNCIAA, a database of 723 benchmark interaction energies of short-range noncovalent interactions between neutral/charged amino acids originated from protein x-ray crystal structures at the “gold standard” coupled-cluster with singles, doubles, and perturbative triples/complete basis set [CCSD(T)/CBS] level of theory with a mean absolute binding uncertainty less than 0.1 kcal/mol. Subsequently, a systematic assessment of commonly used computational methods, such as the second-order Møller−Plesset theory (MP2), density functional theory (DFT), symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT), composite electronic-structure methods, semiempirical approaches, and the physical-based potentials with machine learning (IPML) on SNCIAA is carried out. It is shown that the inclusion of dispersion corrections is essential even though these dimers are dominated by electrostatics, such as hydrogen bondings and salt bridges. Overall, MP2, ωB97M-V, and B3LYP+D4 turned out to be the most reliable methods for the description of short-range NCIs even in strongly attractive/repulsive complexes. SAPT is also recommended in describing short-range NCIs only if the δMP2 correction has been included. The good performance of IPML for dimers at close-equilibrium and long-range conditions is not transferable to the short-range. We expect that SNCIAA will assist the development/improvement/validation of computational methods, such as DFT, force-fields, and ML models, in describing NCIs across entire potential energy surfaces (short-, intermediate-, and long-range NCIs) on the same footing.

Chemistry↗

Repartitioned Brillouin-Wigner perturbation theory with a size-consistent second-order correlation energy

Second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) often breaks down catastrophically in small-gap systems, leaving much to be desired in its performance for myriad chemical applications such as noncovalent interactions, thermochemistry, and dative bonding in transition metal complexes. This divergence problem has reignited interest in Brillouin-Wigner perturbation theory (BWPT), which is regular at all orders but lacks size consistency and extensivity, severely limiting its application to chemistry. In this work, we propose an alternative partitioning of the Hamiltonian that leads to a regular BWPT perturbation series that, through the second order, is size-extensive, size-consistent (provided its Hartree–Fock reference is also), and orbital invariant. Here, our second-order size-consistent Brillouin-Wigner (BW-s2) approach can describe the exact dissociation limit of H 2 in a minimal basis set, regardless of the spin polarization of the reference orbitals. More broadly, we find that BW-s2 offers improvements relative to MP2 for covalent bond breaking, noncovalent interaction energies, and metal/organic reaction energies, although rivaling coupled-cluster with single and double substitutions for thermochemical properties.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Design and fabrication of TiO 2 -based dye sensitized solar cells using plant-derived organic dyes

The utilization of solar energy, an abundant and renewable resource, shows great promise. Various technologies have been employed to capture this vast energy potential. In this study, the effectiveness of natural dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) was explored through experimental and computational methods. Organic dyes derived from specific plant species were examined, with a solvent mixture of ethanol, methanol, and tetrahydrofuran used for extraction. A UV–vis spectrophotometer was utilized to measure the sensitizers’ optical characteristics. The study employed density functional theory (DFT), implemented in Gaussian 09 W software, to perform computational calculations. The B3LYP method and a basis set of 6-31G++(d,p) were chosen for optimizing the geometries and energetics of dye molecules. The DFT results indicated that the dye molecules had a bandgap in the range of 2.16–2.38 eV. The photochemical performance of all four fabricated DSSC-based devices was evaluated to be between 0.33% and 1.04%, and the Euryops pectinatus sensitizer demonstrated the highest efficiency of 1.04% among the studied sensitizers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

The multichannel i -propyl + O2 reaction system: A model of secondary alkyl radical oxidation

The i-propyl + O2 reaction mechanism has been investigated by definitive quantum chemical methods to establish this system as a benchmark for the combustion of secondary alkyl radicals. Focal point analyses extrapolating to the ab initio limit were performed based on explicit computations with electron correlation treatments through coupled cluster single, double, triple, and quadruple excitations and basis sets up to cc-pV5Z. The rigorous coupled cluster single, double, and triple excitations/cc-pVTZ level of theory was used to fully optimize all reaction species and transition states, thus, removing some substantial flaws in reference geometries existing in the literature. The vital i-propylperoxy radical (MIN1) and its concerted elimination transition state (TS1) were found 34.8 and 4.4 kcal mol−1 below the reactants, respectively. Two β-hydrogen transfer transition states (TS2, TS2′) lie above the reactants by (1.4, 2.5) kcal mol−1 and display large Born–Oppenheimer diagonal corrections indicative of nearby surface crossings. An α-hydrogen transfer transition state (TS5) is discovered 5.7 kcal mol−1 above the reactants that bifurcates into equivalent α-peroxy radical hanging wells (MIN3) prior to a highly exothermic dissociation into acetone + OH. The reverse TS5 → MIN1 intrinsic reaction path also displays fascinating features, including another bifurcation and a conical intersection of potential energy surfaces. An exhaustive conformational search of two hydroperoxypropyl (QOOH) intermediates (MIN2 and MIN3) of the i-propyl + O2 system located nine rotamers within 0.9 kcal mol−1 of the corresponding lowest-energy minima.

Chemistry↗

Accelerating and stabilizing the convergence of vibrational self-consistent field calculations via the direct inversion of the iterative subspace (vDIIS) algorithm

The vibrational self-consistent field (VSCF) method yields anharmonic states and spectra for molecular vibrations, and it serves as the starting point for more sophisticated correlated-vibration methods. Convergence of the iterative, non-linear optimization in VSCF calculations can be erratic or altogether unsuccessful, particularly for chemical systems involving low-frequency motions. In this work, a vibrational formulation of the Direct Inversion of the Iterative Subspace method of Pulay is presented and investigated. This formulation accounts for distinct attributes of the vibrational and electronic cases, including the expansion of each single-mode vibrational wavefunction in its own basis set. The resulting Direct Inversion of the Iterative Subspace method is shown to substantially accelerate VSCF convergence in all convergent cases as well as rectify many cases where Roothaan-based methods fail. Performance across systems ranging from small, rigid molecules to weakly bound molecular clusters is investigated in this analysis.

Chemistry↗