A summary of the technical advances that are incorporated in the fourth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program is provided, covering approximately the last seven years. These include developments in density functional theory methods and algorithms, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) property evaluation, coupled cluster and perturbation theories, methods for electronically excited and openshell species, tools for treating extended environments, algorithms for walking on potential surfaces, analysis tools, energy and electron transfer modelling, parallel computing capabilities, and graphical user interfaces. In addition, a selection of example case studies that illustrate these capabilities is given. These include extensive benchmarks of the comparative accuracy of modern density functionals for bonded and non-bonded interactions, tests of attenuated second order Møller-Plesset (MP2) methods for intermolecular interactions, a variety of parallel performance benchmarks, and tests of the accuracy of implicit solvation models. Some specific chemical examples include calculations on the strongly correlated Cr 2 dimer, exploring zeolitecatalysed ethane dehydrogenation, energy decomposition analysis of a charged ter-molecular complex arising from glycerol photoionisation, and natural transition orbitals for a Frenkel exciton state in a nine-unit model of a self-assembling nanotube.Keywords quantum chemistry, software, electronic structure theory, density functional theory, electron correlation, computational modelling, Q-Chem Disciplines Chemistry CommentsThis article is from Molecular Physics: An International Journal at the Interface Between Chemistry and Physics 113 (2015): 184, doi:10.1080/00268976.2014. RightsWorks produced by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are not copyrighted within the U.S. The content of this document is not copyrighted. Authors 185A summary of the technical advances that are incorporated in the fourth major release of the Q-CHEM quantum chemistry program is provided, covering approximately the last seven years. These include developments in density functional theory methods and algorithms, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) property evaluation, coupled cluster and perturbation theories, methods for electronically excited and open-shell species, tools for treating extended environments, algorithms for walking on potential surfaces, analysis tools, energy and electron transfer modelling, parallel computing capabilities, and graphical user interfaces. In addition, a selection of example case studies that illustrate these capabilities is given. These include extensive benchmarks of the comparative accuracy of modern density functionals for bonded and non-bonded interactions, tests of attenuated second order Møller-Plesset (MP2) methods for intermolecular interactions, a variety of parallel performance benchmarks, and tests of the accuracy of implicit solvation models. Some specific chemical examples include calculations on the strongly corre...

The implementation of an efficient program of the algebraic diagrammatic construction method for the polarisation propagator in third-order perturbation theory (ADC(3)) for the computation of excited states is reported. The accuracies of ADC(2) and ADC(3) schemes have been investigated with respect to Thiel's recently established benchmark set for excitation energies and oscillator strengths. The calculation of 141 vertical excited singlet and 71 triplet states of 28 small to medium-sized organic molecules has revealed that ADC(3) exhibits mean error and standard deviation of 0.12 ± 0.28 eV for singlet states and -0.18 ± 0.16 eV for triplet states when the provided theoretical best estimates are used as benchmark. Accordingly, the ADC(2)-s and ADC(2)-x calculations revealed accuracies of 0.22 ± 0.38 eV and -0.70 ± 0.37 eV for singlets and 0.12 ± 0.16 eV and -0.55 ± 0.20 eV for triplets, respectively. For a comparison of CC3 and ADC(3), only non-CC3 benchmark values were considered, which comprise 84 singlet states and 19 triplet states. For these singlet states CC3 exhibits an accuracy of 0.23 ± 0.21 eV and ADC(3) an accuracy of 0.08 ± 0.27 eV, and accordingly for the triplet states of 0.12 ± 0.10 eV and -0.10 ± 0.13 eV, respectively. Hence, based on the quality of the existing benchmark set it is practically not possible to judge whether ADC(3) or CC3 is more accurate, however, ADC(3) has a much larger range of applicability due to its more favourable scaling of O(N(6)) with system size.

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The reliability of linear response approaches such as time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TD-HF) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) for the prediction of the excited state properties of 3,4;9,10-tetracarboxylic-perylene-bisimide (PBI) aggregates is investigated. A dimer model of PBI is investigated as a function of a torsional motion of the monomers, which was shown before to be an important intermolecular coordinate in these aggregates. The potential energy curves of the ground state and the two energetically lowest neutral excited and charge-transfer (CT) states were obtained with the spin-component scaling modification of the approximate coupled-cluster singles-and-doubles (SCS-CC2) method as a benchmark for dispersion corrected TD-HF and a range of TD-DFT approaches. The highly accurate SCS-CC2 results are used to assess the other, computationally less demanding methods. TD-HF predicts similar potential energy curves and transition dipole moments as SCS-CC2, as well as the correct order of neutral and CT states. This supports an exciton trapping mechanism, which was found on the basis of TD-HF data. However, the investigated TD-DFT methods provide generally the opposite character for the excited states. As a consequence, these TD-DFT results have unacceptably large errors for optical properties of these dye aggregates.

Intermolecular coulombic decay (ICD) is an efficient mechanism of low-energy electron generation in condensed phases and is discussed as their potential source in living cells, tissues, and materials. The first example of ICD as an operating mechanism in real biological systems, that is, in the DNA repair enzymes photolyases, is presented. Photolyase function involves light-induced electron detachment from a reduced flavin adenine dinucleotide (FADH(-)), followed by its transfer to the DNA-lesion triggering repair of covalently bound nucleobase dimers. Modern quantum chemical methods are employed to demonstrate that the transferred electron is efficiently generated via a resonant ICD process between the antenna pigment and the FADH(-) cofactors.