Title: van der Waals density functional calculations of binding in molecular crystals
Preprint, 2010

A recent paper [J. Chem. Phys. 132, 134705 (2010)] illustrated the potential of the van der Waals density functional (vdW-DF) method [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 246401 (2004)] for efficient first-principle accounts of structure and cohesion in molecular crystals. Since then, modifications of the original vdW-DF version (identified as vdW-DF1) has been proposed, and there is also a new version called vdW-DF2 [ArXiv 1003.5255], within the vdW-DF framework. Here we investigate the performance and nature of the modifications and the new version for the binding of a set of simple molecular crystals: hexamine, dodecahedrane, C60, and graphite. These extended systems provide benchmarks for computational methods dealing with sparse matter. We show that a previously documented enhancement of non-local correlations of vdW-DF1 over an asymptotic atom-based account close to and a few A, beyond binding separation persists in vdW-DF2. The calculation and analysis of the binding in molecular crystals requires appropriate computational tools. In this paper, we also present details on our real-space parallel implementation of the vdW-DF correlation and on the method used to generate asymptotic atom-based pair potentials based on vdW-DF.

Author

Kristian Berland

Chalmers, Applied Physics, Electronics Material and Systems

Øyvind Borck

Per Hyldgaard

Chalmers, Applied Physics, Electronics Material and Systems

Areas of Advance

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

Materials Science

Subject Categories

Physical Sciences

Condensed Matter Physics

More information

Created

10/7/2017