Functionals, nonempirical

The determination of the electronic structure of lanthanide-doped materials and the prediction of the optical properties are not trivial tasks. The standard ligand field models lack predictive power and undergoes parametric uncertainty at low symmetry, while customary computation methods, such as DFT, cannot be used in a routine manner for ligand field on lanthanide accounts. The ligand field density functional theory (LFDFT) algorithm23-30 consists of a customized conduct of nonempirical DFT calculations, extracting reliable parameters that can be used in further numeric experiments, relevant for the prediction in luminescent materials science.31 These series of parameters, which have to be determined in order to analyze the problem of two-open-shell 4f and 5d electrons in lanthanide materials, are as follows. 

Ab-initio (nonempirical, from first principles ) methods also use the HF-SCF model but includes all electrons and uses minimal approximation. Basis sets of functions based on linear combinations of atomic orbitals (LCAO) increase in complexity from the simplest (STO-3G) to more complex (3-21G( )) to extended basis sets (6-311 + G ) for the most accurate (and most time-consuming) results. Treat systems up to 50 atoms. 

Nonempirical GGA functionals satisfy the uniform density limit. In addition, they satisfy several known, exact properties of the exchange-correlation hole. Two widely used nonempirical functionals that satisfy these properties are the Perdew-Wang 91 (PW91) functional and the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional. Because GGA functionals include more physical ingredients than the LDA functional, it is often assumed that nonempirical GGA functionals should be more accurate than the LDA. This is quite often true, but there are exceptions. One example is in the calculation of the surface energy of transition metals and oxides. 

The calculation of AH° and AS° values from the pK-temperature data in each solvent mixture was performed by the nonempirical method of Clarke and Glew (26) as simplified by Bolton (27). In this method the thermodynamic parameters are considered to be continuous, well-behaved functions of temperature, and their values are expressed as perturbations of their values at some reference temperature 0 by a Taylor s series expansion. The basic equation is ... 

The interaction parameters for the water molecules were taken from nonempirical configuration interaction calculations for water dimers (41) that have been shown to give good agreement between experimental radial distribution functions and simulations at low sorbate densities. The potential terms for the water-ferrierite interaction consisted of repulsion, dispersion, and electrostatic terms. The first two of these terms are the components of the 6-12 Lennard-Jones function, and the electrostatic term accounts for long-range contributions and is evaluated by an Ewald summation. The... 

The ground-state wave function of cytosine has been calculated by practically all the semiempirical as well as nonempirical methods. Here, we shall discuss the application of these methods to interpret the experimental quantities that can. be calculated from the molecular orbitals of cytosines and are related to the distribution of electron densities in the molecules. The simplest v-HMO method yielded a great mass of useful information concerning the structure and the properties of biological molecules including cytosines. The reader is referred to the book1 Quantum Biochemistry for the application of this method to interpret the physicochemical properties of biomolecules. Here we will restrict our attention to the results of the v-SCF MO and the all-valence or all-electron treatments of cytosines. 

In the previous sections, the following nonempirical functionals were mentioned LDA, PBE, and TPSS. These functionals represent the lowest three rungs on the Jacob s ladder LDA, GGA, and meta-GGA. At the GGA-and meta-GGA levels, the approximate exchange-correlation functionals were obtained, not directly, but through consttuction of approximations to the exchange-correlation hole (nxc(r, r ))... 

Benchmark atomic ionization energies and electron affinities (from H to Zn) calculated as energy differences (ASCF) for LDA- and three nonempirical GGA functionals developed by Perdew and collaborators97 indicate that errors of these quantities depend strongly on the choice of the GGA functional. 

The mPBE functional39 is a modification of the nonempirical PBE functional into which one empirical parameter was reintroduced. Compared to PBE, mPBE leads to significantly worse interaction energy for the water dimer, whereas the interaction energies in the cases of hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen chloride dimers are only slightly improved. 

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