The implementation of technique for full structural optimizations of complex periodic systems in the DFT-PAW package VASP, including the volume and shape of the unit cell and the internal coordinates of the atoms, together with a correction that allows an appropriate modeling of London dispersion forces, as given by the DFT-D2 approach of Grimme [Grimme, S. J. Comp. Chem. 2006, 27, 1787], is reported. Dispersion corrections are calculated not only for the forces acting on the atoms, but also for the stresses on the unit cell. This permits a simultaneous optimization of all degrees of freedom. Benchmark results on a series of prototype systems are presented and compared to results obtained by other methods and experimental data. It is demonstrated that the computationally inexpensive DFT-D2 scheme yields reasonable predictions for the structure, bulk moduli, and cohesive energies of weakly bonded materials.

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The Tkatchenko-Scheffler method for calculating dispersion correction to standard density-functional theory, which uses fixed neutral atoms as a reference to estimate the effective volumes of atoms-in-molecule and to calibrate their polarizabilities and dispersion coefficients, fails to describe the structure and the energetics of ionic solids. Here, we propose a more appropriate partitioning, based on the iterative Hirshfeld scheme, where the fractionally charged atomic reference state is determined self-consistently. We show that our new method extends the applicability of the original method in particular to study ionic systems and adsorption phenomena on surfaces of ionic solids.

Recently we have demonstrated that the applicability of the Tkatchenko-Scheffler (TS) method for calculating dispersion corrections to density-functional theory can be extended to ionic systems if the Hirshfeld method for estimating effective volumes and charges of atoms in molecules or solids (AIM's) is replaced by its iterative variant [T. Bučko, S. Lebègue, J. Hafner, and J. Ángyán, J. Chem. Theory Comput. 9, 4293 (2013)]. The standard Hirshfeld method uses neutral atoms as a reference, whereas in the iterative Hirshfeld (HI) scheme the fractionally charged atomic reference states are determined self-consistently. We show that the HI method predicts more realistic AIM charges and that the TS/HI approach leads to polarizabilities and C6 dispersion coefficients in ionic or partially ionic systems which are, as expected, larger for anions than for cations (in contrast to the conventional TS method). For crystalline materials, the new algorithm predicts polarizabilities per unit cell in better agreement with the values derived from the Clausius-Mosotti equation. The applicability of the TS/HI method has been tested for a wide variety of molecular and solid-state systems. It is demonstrated that for systems dominated by covalent interactions and/or dispersion forces the TS/HI method leads to the same results as the conventional TS approach. The difference between the TS/HI and TS approaches increases with increasing ionicity. A detailed comparison is presented for isoelectronic series of octet compounds, layered crystals, complex intermetallic compounds, and hydrides, and for crystals built of molecules or containing molecular anions. It is demonstrated that only the TS/HI method leads to accurate results for systems where both electrostatic and dispersion interactions are important, as illustrated for Li-intercalated graphite and for molecular adsorption on the surfaces in ionic solids and in the cavities of zeolites.

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By explicitly including fractionally ionic contributions to the polarizability of a many-component system, we are able to significantly improve on previous atom-wise many-body van der Waals approaches with essentially no extra numerical cost. For nonionic systems, our method is comparable in accuracy to existing approaches. However, it offers substantial improvements in ionic solids, e.g., producing better polarizabilities by over 65% in some cases. It has particular benefits for two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides and interactions of H with modified coronenes, ionic systems of nanotechnological interest. It thus offers an efficient improvement on existing approaches, valid for a wide range of systems.

The adsorption of small alkane molecules in purely siliceous and protonated chabazite has been investigated at different levels of theory: (i) density-functional (DFT) calculations with a gradient-corrected exchange-correlation functional; DFT calculations using the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional with corrections for the missing dispersion forces in the form of C(6)∕R(6) pair potentials with (ii) C(6) parameters and vdW radii determined by fitting accurate energies for a large molecular data base (PBE-d) or (iii) derived from "atoms in a solid" calculations; (iv) DFT calculations using a non-local correlation functional constructed such as to account for dispersion forces (vdW-DF); (v) calculations based on the random phase approximation (RPA) combined with the adiabatic-coupling fluctuation-dissipation theorem; and (vi) using Hartree-Fock (HF) calculations together with correlation energies calculated using second-order Møller-Plesset (MP2) perturbation theory. All calculations have been performed for periodic models of the zeolite and using a plane-wave basis and the projector-augmented wave method. The simpler and computationally less demanding approaches (i)-(iv) permit a calculation of the forces acting on the atoms using the Hellmann-Feynman theorem and further a structural optimization of the adsorbate-zeolite complex, while RPA and MP2 calculations can be performed only for a fixed geometry optimized at a lower level of theory. The influence of elevated temperature has been taken into account by averaging the adsorption energies calculated for purely siliceous and protonated chabazite, with weighting factors determined by molecular dynamics calculations with dispersion-corrected forces from DFT. Compared to experiment, the RPA underestimates the adsorption energies by about 5 kJ/mol while MP2 leads to an overestimation by about 6 kJ/Mol (averaged over methane, ethane, and propane). The most accurate results have been found for the "hybrid" RPA-HF method with an average error of less than 2 kJ/mol only, while RPA underestimates the adsorption energies by about 8 kJ/mol on average. MP2 overestimates the adsorption energies slightly, with an average error of 5 kJ/mol. The more approximate and computationally less demanding methods such as the vdW-DF density functional or the C(6)∕R(6) pair potentials with C(6) parameters from "atoms in a solid" calculations overestimate the adsorption energies quite strongly. Relatively good agreement with experiment is achieved with the empirical PBE+d method with an average error of about 5 kJ/mol.