Advances in theory and algorithms for electronic structure calculations must be incorporated into program packages to enable them to become routinely used by the broader chemical community. This work reviews advances made over the past five years or so that constitute the major improvements contained in a new release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry package, together with illustrative timings and applications. Specific developments discussed include fast methods for density functional theory calculations, linear scaling evaluation of energies, NMR chemical shifts and electric properties, fast auxiliary basis function methods for correlated energies and gradients, equation-of-motion coupled cluster methods for ground and excited states, geminal wavefunctions, embedding methods and techniques for exploring potential energy surfaces.

A combination of interpolation methods and local saddle-point search algorithms is probably the most efficient way of finding transition states in chemical reactions. Interpolation methods such as the growing-string method and the nudged-elastic band are able to find an approximation to the minimum-energy pathway and thereby provide a good initial guess for a transition state and imaginary mode connecting both reactant and product states. Since interpolation methods employ usually just a small number of configurations and converge slowly close to the minimum-energy pathway, local methods such as partitioned rational function optimization methods using either exact or approximate Hessians or minimum-mode-following methods such as the dimer or the Lanczos method have to be used to converge to the transition state. A modification to the original dimer method proposed by [Henkelman and Jonnson J. Chem. Phys. 111, 7010 (1999)] is presented, reducing the number of gradient calculations per cycle from six to four gradients or three gradients and one energy, and significantly improves the overall performance of the algorithm on quantum-chemical potential-energy surfaces, where forces are subject to numerical noise. A comparison is made between the dimer methods and the well-established partitioned rational function optimization methods for finding transition states after the use of interpolation methods. Results for 24 different small- to medium-sized chemical reactions covering a wide range of structural types demonstrate that the improved dimer method is an efficient alternative saddle-point search algorithm on medium-sized to large systems and is often even able to find transition states when partitioned rational function optimization methods fail to converge.

No abstract

No abstract

The reaction mechanism for nitrous oxide decomposition has been studied on hydrated and dehydrated mononuclear iron sites in Fe-ZSM-5 using density functional theory. In total, 46 different surface species with different spin states (spin multiplicity M(S) = 4 or 6) and 63 elementary reactions were considered. Heats of adsorption, activation barriers, reaction rates, and minimum energy pathways were determined. The approximate minimum energy pathways and transition states were calculated using the "growing string method" and a modified "dimer method". Spin surface crossing (e.g., O(2) desorption) was considered. The minimum potential energy structure on the seam of two potential energy surfaces was determined with a multiplier penalty function algorithm by Powell and approximate rates of spin surface crossings were calculated. It was found that nitrous oxide decomposition is first order with respect to nitrous oxide concentration and zero order with respect to oxygen concentration. Water impurities in the gas stream have a strong inhibiting effect. In the concentration range of 1-100 ppb, the presence of water vapor influences the surface composition and the apparent rate coefficient. This is especially relevant in the temperature range of 600-700 K where most experimental kinetic studies are performed. Apparent activation barriers determined over this temperature range vary from 28.4 (1 ppb H(2)O) to 54.8 kcal/mol (100 ppb H(2)O). These results give an explanation why different research groups and different catalyst pretreatments often result in very different activation barriers and preexponential factors. Altogether perfect agreement with experimental results could be achieved.