One-Pot Graphene Supported PtCu Nanoparticles-From Theory towards an Effective Molecular Oxygen Reduction Reaction Catalyst.

In this work, recent research progresses in the formation of PtCu nanoparticles onto the surface of graphene are described, and the obtained results are contrasted with previously published theoretical studies. To form these nanoparticles, tetrabutylammonium hexachloroplatinate, and copper acetylacetonate are used as platinum and copper precursors, respectively. Oleylamine is used as a reductor and a solvent.

Variational Density Fitting with a Krylov Subspace Method.

In this work, we present the implementation of a variational density fitting methodology that uses iterative linear algebra for solving the associated system of linear equations. It is well known that most difficulties with this system arise from the fact that the coefficient matrix is in general ill-conditioned and, due to finite precision round-off errors, it may not be positive definite. The dimensionality, given by the number of auxiliary functions, also poses a challenge in terms of memory and time demand since the coefficient matrix is dense.

Molecular Simulations with in-deMon2k QM/MM, a Tutorial-Review.

deMon2k is a readily available program specialized in Density Functional Theory (DFT) simulations within the framework of Auxiliary DFT. This article is intended as a tutorial-review of the capabilities of the program for molecular simulations involving ground and excited electronic states. The program implements an additive QM/MM (quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics) module relying either on non-polarizable or polarizable force fields.

Range-Separated Hybrid Functionals with Variational Fitted Exact Exchange.

This work presents a variationally fitted long-range exact exchange algorithm that can be used for the computation of range-separated hybrid density functionals in the linear combination of Gaussian type orbital (LCGTO) approximation. The obtained LCGTO energy and gradient expressions are free of four-center integrals and employ modified three-center integral recurrence relations to obtain optimal computational performance. The accuracy and performance of selected range-separated hybrid functionals with variational fitted long-range exact exchange are analyzed and discussed.

Magnetizability tensors from auxiliary density functional theory.

The working equations for the calculation of the magnetizability tensor in the framework of auxiliary density functional theory with gauge including atomic orbitals (ADFT-GIAO) are derived. Unlike in the corresponding conventional density functional theory implementations the numerical integration of the GIAOs is avoided in ADFT-GIAO. Our validation shows that this simplification has no effect on the accuracy of the methodology.

NMR shielding tensors from auxiliary density functional theory.

The working equations for the calculation of NMR shielding tensors in the framework of auxiliary density functional theory are derived. It is shown that in this approach the numerical integration over gauge-including atomic orbitals can be avoided without the loss of accuracy. New integral recurrence relations for the required analytic electric-field-type integrals are derived.

Robust and efficient density fitting.

In this paper we propose an iterative method for solving the inhomogeneous systems of linear equations associated with density fitting. The proposed method is based on a version of the conjugate gradient method that makes use of automatically built quasi-Newton preconditioners. The paper gives a detailed description of a parallel implementation of the new method.

First-Principle Calculations of Large Fullerenes.

State of-the-art density functional theory calculations have been performed for the large fullerenes C180, C240, C320, and C540 using the linear combination of Gaussian-type orbitals density functional theory (LCGTO-DFT) approach. For the calculations all-electron basis sets were employed. All fullerene structures were fully optimized without symmetry constrains.

How important are temperature effects for cluster polarizabilities?

State-of-the-art first-principle all-electron density functional theory calculations on small sodium clusters are performed to study the temperature dependency of their polarizabilities. For this purpose Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics simulations with more than 100,000 time steps (>200 ps) are recorded employing gradient corrected functionals in combination with a double-zeta valence polarization basis set. For each cluster 18 trajectories between 50 and 900 K are collected.

Boron-doped diamond: Investigation of the stability of surface-doping versus bulk-doping using cyclic cluster model calculations.

Boron-doped bulk diamond and the boron-doped hydrogen terminated (001) surface of diamond were investigated using the cyclic cluster model. Structure and stability of the hydrogen-terminated (001) surface were calculated and compared with experimental and other theoretical results from the literature. Boron-doping was modeled by substitution of a carbon atom by a boron atom in different positions with increasing distance from the surface up to boron-doped bulk diamond.

Separation of sigma and pi energies.

This work presents an all-electron density functional theory implementation of the separation of sigma and pi energies. On the basis of the separation of the electronic density, rho, into sigma and pi parts, an ansatz for the separation of the exchange-correlation energy is proposed. The behavior of the sigma and pi energy parts in benzene is investigated under different distortions.

Parallelization of the deMon2k code.

The parallelization of the LCGTO-KS-DFT code deMon2k is presented. The parallelization of the three-center electron repulsion integrals, the numerical integration using a direct grid algorithm and the matrix multiplication and diagonalization are described. The efficiency of the parallelization is analyzed by selected benchmark calculations.

Bond energies for molecules, clusters, and deposit systems.

A new approach is suggested to the assignment of bond energies in molecules and clusters. It uses a shareholder principle for the redistribution of the shifts in atomic energies, which arise in a molecule, on the bonds. The scheme is directly suitable for semiempirical methods, where only one- and two-center terms occur.