Plane-wave basis set

The pseudopotential density-functional technique is used to calculate total energies, forces on atoms and stress tensors as described in Ref. 13 and implemented in the computer code CASTEP. CASTEP uses a plane-wave basis set to expand wave-functions and a preconditioned conjugate gradient scheme to solve the density-functional theory (DFT) equations iteratively. Brillouin zone integration is carried out via the special points scheme by Monkhorst and Pack. The nonlocal pseudopotentials in Kleynman-Bylander form were optimized in order to achieve the best convergence with respect to the basis set size. 5... 

The KS equation (Eq. 23) when expressed in terms of a plane-wave basis set takes a very simple form ... 

Kresse G, Furthmuller J. 1996a. Efficiency of ab-initio total energy calculations for metals and semiconductors using a plane-wave basis set. Comput Mater Sci 6 15-50. 

In molecular DFT calculations, it is natural to include all electrons in the calculations and hence no further subtleties than the ones described arise in the calculation of the isomer shift. However, there are situations where other approaches are advantageous. The most prominent situation is met in the case of solids. Here, it is difficult to capture the effects of an infinite system with a finite size cluster model and one should resort to dedicated solid state techniques. It appears that very efficient solid state DFT implementations are possible on the basis of plane wave basis sets. However, it is difficult to describe the core region with plane wave basis sets. Hence, the core electrons need to be replaced by pseudopotentials, which precludes a direct calculation of the electron density at the Mossbauer absorber atom. However, there are workarounds and the subtleties involved in this subject are discussed in a complementary chapter by Blaha (see CD-ROM, Part HI). 

Although the use of a pseudopotential formalism helps significantly in reducing the size of a plane wave basis set, typical expansions still include impressive numbers of 10,000-100,000 plane wave coefficients. All of these have to be propagated simultaneously during the dynamics this makes AIMD approaches highly memory intensive. 

The second approach used in first-principles tribological simulations focuses on the behavior of the sheared fluid. That is, the walls are not considered and the system is treated as bulk fluid, as discussed. These simulations are typically performed using ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) with DFT and plane-wave basis sets. A general tribological AIMD simulation would be run as follows. A system representing the fluid would be placed in a simulation cell repeated periodically in all three directions. Shear or load is applied to the system using schemes such as that of Parrinello and Rahman, which was discussed above. In this approach, one defines a (potentially time-dependent) reference stress tensor aref and alters the nuclear and cell dynamics, such that the internal stress tensor crsys is equal to aref. When crsys = aref, the internal and external forces on the cell vectors balance, and the system is subject to the desired shear or load. 

When performing variable-cell AIMD simulations with plane-wave basis sets, problems originate from the fact that the basis set is not complete with respect to the cell vectors.71 This incompleteness can introduce fictitious forces (Pulay forces) into asys and lead to artificial dynamics. To overcome this problem, one must ensure that asys is well converged with respect to the basis set size. In general, it is found that one needs to employ a plane-wave kinetic... 

The study of the enantioselective hydrosilylation reaction was performed with a series of combined quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) calculations [26, 30] within the computational scheme of ab initio (AIMD) (Car-Parrinello) [62] molecular dynamics. The AIMD approach has been described in a number of excellent reviews [63-66], AIMD as well as hybrid QM/MM-AIMD calculations [26, 47] were performed with the ab initio molecular dynamics program CPMD [67] based on a pseudopotential framework, a plane wave basis set, and periodic boundary conditions. We have recently developed an interface to the CPMD package in which the coupling with a molecular mechanics force field has been implemented [26, 68],... 

The wave functions are expended in a plane wave basis set, and the effective potential of ions is described by ultrasoft pseudo potential. The generalized gradient approximation (GGA)-PW91, and local gradient-corrected exchange-correlation functional (LDA)-CAPZ are used for the exchange-correlation functional. 

All calculations in this chapter used the PBE GGA functional and a plane-wave basis set including waves with an energy cutoff of 380 eV. For all surface calculations, the supercell dimensions in the plane of the surface were defined using the DFT-optimized bulk lattice parameter. 

In order to calculate the band structure and the density of states (DOS) of periodic unit cells of a-rhombohedral boron (Fig. la) and of boron nanotubes (Fig. 3a), we applied the VASP package [27], an ab initio density functional code, using plane-waves basis sets and ultrasoft pseudopotentials. The electron-electron interaction was treated within the local density approximation (LDA) with the Geperley-Alder exchange-correlation functional [28]. The kinetic-energy cutoff used for the plane-wave expansion of... 

In addition to the cluster calculations, we report details of recent first-principles calculations based on the density functional formalism. These calculations employ periodic boundary conditions to allow investigation of the entire zeolite lattice, and therefore the use of a plane-wave basis set is applicable. This has a number of advantages, most notably that the absence of atom-centered basis functions results in no basis set superposition error (BSSE) (272), which arises as a result of the finite nature of atom-centered basis sets. Nonlocal, or gradient, corrections are applicable also, just as they are in the cluster calculations. 

Also pure density-functional methods combined with plane-wave basis sets and ultrasoft pseudopotentials [58] were used in our studies of extended systems [59]. The computational efficiency of these methods enables larger systems and to some extent dynamical processes to be studied. Generalized-gradient approximation (GGA) or spin-polarized GGA DFT functionals [60, 61] were employed in the electronic structure calculations. 

Fig. 5 The optimized structure of the DMSO intercalated molecule in the K-DMSO system calculated using cluster model at the B3LYP/3-21G level of theory [148], and periodic model calculated using the DFT method, PW91 potential and plane waves basis set [150] (K-DMSO(4) model).

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