Density functional full-potential linearized augmented plane wave method

We employed density functional calculations using the ultrasoft pseudopotential plane wave method to investigate the CHQ nanotubes and the encapsulated silver nanowires. The local density approximation (LDA) of Ceperley and Alder and Vanderbilt pseudopotential was employed and the cutoff energy of the plane wave basis set was 20 Ry [27,182-185]. Full-potential linearized augmented plane wave method calculations were also carried out on the isolated silver nanowire [195-197]. To check the reliability of our... 

Classical simulations often lack the crucial insight into the problem, because one cannot simply use the force to characterize all the possible interactions. Fortunately, with decades of development, theoretical calculations have become quite sophisticated for crystals and molecules, although not yet for realistic nanometer-sized materials. For solids, the pseudopotential as well as the full-potential linearized augmented plane-wave (FLAPW) method within the density functional theory are well developed. Modern quantum chemical techniques (Gaussian98 [5] and MOLPRO [6]) are quite efficient to compute the potential surfaces for a given molecule. In order to illustrate those possibilities, we show some of our own results in simulating the reaction path for a segment of the retinal molecule in rhodopsin [7]. 

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