We present an overview of the ONETEP program for linear-scaling density functional theory (DFT) calculations with large basis set (planewave) accuracy on parallel computers. The DFT energy is computed from the density matrix, which is constructed from spatially localized orbitals we call Non-orthogonal Generalized Wannier Functions (NGWFs), expressed in terms of periodic sinc (psinc) functions. During the calculation, both the density matrix and the NGWFs are optimized with localization constraints. By taking advantage of localization, ONETEP is able to perform calculations including thousands of atoms with computational effort, which scales linearly with the number or atoms. The code has a large and diverse range of capabilities, explored in this paper, including different boundary conditions, various exchangecorrelation functionals (with and without exact exchange), finite electronic temperature methods for metallic systems, methods for strongly correlated systems, molecular dynamics, vibrational calculations, time-dependent DFT, electronic transport, core loss spectroscopy, implicit solvation, quantum mechanical (QM)/molecular mechanical and QM-in-QM embedding, density of states calculations, distributed multipole analysis, and methods for partitioning charges and interactions between fragments. Calculations with ONETEP provide unique insights into large and complex systems that require an accurate atomic-level description, ranging from biomolecular to chemical, to materials, and to physical problems, as we show with a small selection of illustrative examples. ONETEP has always aimed to be at the cutting edge of method and software developments, and it serves as a platform for developing new methods of electronic structure simulation. We therefore conclude by describing some of the challenges and directions for its future developments and applications.

Implicit solvent models are a computationally efficient method of representing solid/liquid interfaces prevalent in electrocatalysis, energy storage and materials science. However, electronic structure changes induced at the metallic surface by the dielectric continuum are not fully understood. To address this, we perform DFT calculations for the Pt(111)/water interface, in order to compare Poisson-Boltzmann continuum solvation methods with ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations of explicit solvent. We show that the implicit solvent cavity can be parametrized in terms of the electric dipole moment change at the equilibrated explicit Pt/water interface to obtain the potential of zero charge (PZC). We also compare the accuracy of aqueous enthalpies of adsorption of phenol on Pt(111) using geometry and charge density based dielectric cavitation methods. The ability to parametrize the cavity according to individual atoms, as afforded in the geometry based approach, is key to obtaining accurate enthalpy changes of adsorption under aqueous conditions. We also show that the electronic structure changes induced by explicit solvent and our proposed implicit solvent parametrization scheme yield comparable density difference profiles and d-band projected density of states. We therefore demonstrate the capability of implicit solvent approaches to capture both the energetics of adsorption processes and the main electronic effects of aqueous solvent on the metallic surface. This work therefore provides a scheme for computationally efficient simulations of interfacial processes for applications in areas such as heterogeneous catalysis and electrochemistry.

The QM/MM simulation method is provenly efficient for the simulation of biological systems, where an interplay of extensive environment and delicate local interactions drives a process of interest through a...

Adsorption of organics in the aqueous phase is an area which is experimentally difficult to measure, while computational techniques require extensive configurational sampling of the solvent and adsorbate. This is exceedingly computationally demanding, which excludes its routine use. If implicit solvent could be applied instead, this would dramatically reduce the computational cost as configurational sampling of solvent is not needed. Here, using statistical thermodynamic arguments and DFT calculations with implicit solvent models, we show that semiquantitative values for the free energy and entropy change of adsorption in the aqueous phase (ΔG ads solv and ΔS ads solv) for small organics can be calculated, for a range of coverages. We parametrize the soft sphere based solute dielectric cavity to an approximated free energy of solvation for a single Pt atom at the (111) facet, forming upper and lower bounds based on the entropy of water at the aqueous metal interface (ΔG solv(Pt) = −4.35 to −7.18 kJ mol–1). This captures the decrease in ΔG ads solv compared to the free energy of adsorption in the vacuum phase (ΔG ads vac), while solvent models with electron density based cavities fail to do so. For a range of oxygenated aromatics, the adsorption energetics using horizontal gas phase geometries significantly overestimate ΔG ads solv compared to experiment by ∼100 kJ mol–1, but they agree with ab initio MD simulations using similar geometries. This suggests oxygenated aromatic compounds adsorb perpendicular to the metallic surface, while the ΔG ads solv for vertical geometries of furfural and cyclohexanol agree to within 20 kJ mol–1 of experimental studies. The proposed techniques provide an inexpensive toolset for validation and prediction of adsorption energetics on solvated metallic surfaces, which could be further validated by the future availability of more experimental measurements for the aqueous entropy/free energy of adsorption.

No abstract