[Pw_forum] Smearing for metal/insulator supercell

[Hongbin Zhang]

Dear all pwscf user,

I am trying to do some calculations of interfaces between  metals and
insulators. I am not so familiar with PWSCF, so would you please help me
with questions below?

1) How to define whether a system is (or expected to be) insulating or
conducting by parameters of PWSCF?

(I guess we use "smearing" to do this, but not sure.)

2) for metal/insulator supercell, how to set the related parameters? If
it's smearing, should I use a as small as possible smearing?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions or comments.

Best wishes,

Hongbin