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Accurate first-principles structures and energies of diversely bonded systems from an efficient density functional

Nature Chemistry volume 8, pages 831–836 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

One atom or molecule binds to another through various types of bond, the strengths of which range from several meV to several eV. Although some computational methods can provide accurate descriptions of all bond types, those methods are not efficient enough for many studies (for example, large systems, ab initio molecular dynamics and high-throughput searches for functional materials). Here, we show that the recently developed non-empirical strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) meta-generalized gradient approximation (meta-GGA) within the density functional theory framework predicts accurate geometries and energies of diversely bonded molecules and materials (including covalent, metallic, ionic, hydrogen and van der Waals bonds). This represents a significant improvement at comparable efficiency over its predecessors, the GGAs that currently dominate materials computation. Often, SCAN matches or improves on the accuracy of a computationally expensive hybrid functional, at almost-GGA cost. SCAN is therefore expected to have a broad impact on chemistry and materials science.

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Figure 1: SCAN captures the intermediate-range, many-body van der Waals interactions necessary for a quantitative description of various ices and gas-phase water hexamers.
Figure 2: SCAN simultaneously describes covalent and metallic bonding across the Si phase diagram.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported as part of the Center for the Computational Design of Functional Layered Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under award no. DE-SC0012575. Computer equipment in Temple's HPC Center was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under major research instrumentation grant no. CNS-09-58854. J.S., R.C.R., Y.Z., Z.S., A.R. and H.P. acknowledge support in the form of computer time from the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, and the HPC Center of Temple University. X.W. and Y.Z. acknowledge support from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF) under grant no. 53482-DNI6. J.S., A.R., X.W. and J.P.P. thank R. Car, G.I. Csonka, B. Santra and R. DiStasio Jr for discussions. This article is dedicated to the memory of Walter Kohn.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Temple University, 1925 N 12th Street, Philadelphia, 19122, Pennsylvania, USA

    Jianwei Sun, Yubo Zhang, Zhaoru Sun, Adrienn Ruzsinszky, Haowei Peng, Zenghui Yang, Xifan Wu, Michael L. Klein & John P. Perdew

  2. Department of Chemistry, Temple University, 1901 N 13th Street, Philadelphia, 19122, Pennsylvania, USA

    Richard C. Remsing, Michael L. Klein & John P. Perdew

  3. Institute for Computational Molecular Science, Temple University, 1925 N 12th Street, Philadelphia, 19122, Pennsylvania, USA

    Richard C. Remsing & Michael L. Klein

  4. Theoretical Sciences Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, 560064, India

    Arpita Paul & Umesh Waghmare

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Contributions

J.S. and J.P.P. designed the project. J.S., R.C.R., Y.Z., Z.S., A.R. and H.P. carried out the calculations. J.S. implemented the SCAN metaGGA and prepared the initial manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussions and revisions of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianwei Sun.

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Sun, J., Remsing, R., Zhang, Y. et al. Accurate first-principles structures and energies of diversely bonded systems from an efficient density functional. Nature Chem 8, 831–836 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2535

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