[QE-users] Unexpected adsorption energy

Giuseppe Mattioli giuseppe.mattioli at ism.cnr.it
Thu Dec 6 11:23:58 CET 2018


Dear Mohamed

charged ions are tricky in DFT for multiple reasons. The excess and  
well localized charge can suffer a very strong delocalization error  
which may lead to unbound electronic states. Moreover, charged ions  
are generally not stable in gas phase. They often require a polar  
solvent to exist. Finally, in periodic boundary conditions a  
distribution of charge (aka "jellium") is required to compensate the  
positive/negative charge in a supercell, and the reference potential  
is affected by the insertion of such charge, so that for example you  
cannot calculate the ionization energy of a molecule as  
E[q=+1]-E[q=0], as you do when you use GTO codes.

This said, it is not impossible to calculate the adsorption energy of  
charged ions on a given substrate, provided that:

1) You use a hybrid EXX-GGA functional. This is not mandatory, but it  
is recommended because it generally avoids the accommodation of excess  
electrons in unbound states.

2) You embed your system in an implicit dielectric medium (maybe  
"water", in your case). In QE this is easily provided by the  
QUANTUM-ENVIRON plug-in.

Then you can calculate the adsorption energy in two ways:

A) you can start from the interacting configuration of your system and  
progressively remove the ion in several snapshots (or a few snapshot,  
depending on the computational resources you can afford). Then you  
build an interaction potential curve and yiu try to estimate its  
asymptotic value. It requires also a large supercell, of course.

B) you can use a little trick (which however requires 1 and 2 above).  
Put a cation in a part of your supercell where the interaction energy  
with you polymer+anion system is negligible. Then calculate the energy  
of your cation+anion system in a neutral supercell where their charge  
is exactly compensated. The energy difference between three neutral  
supercells E[polymer+anion+cation]-E[polymer]-E[cation+anion] should  
be a sensible estimate of the anion adsorption energy

HTH
Giuseppe

Mohamed Safy <msafy505 at gmail.com> ha scritto:

> Thanks for your valuable information but I have experimental results which
> indicate the presence of adsorption. is this can be considered a
> conflict?.  I tried to validate the method using a smaller system. I
> studied the adsorption of H2 on Graphene.
> The adsorption energy was 17.17 kcal/mol.
> the systems are below
> Complex
> &CONTROL
>     calculation   = "scf"
>     forc_conv_thr =  1.00000e-03
>     max_seconds   =  1.72800e+05
>     nstep         = 1000
>     verbosity='high'
>     restart_mode='from_scratch'
>     iprint=1
>     tprnfor=.true.
>  pseudo_dir = '/lfs01/workdirs/val/Test/pseudo',
> outdir='/lfs01/workdirs/val/Test/Out/C',
> /
>
> &SYSTEM
>     a     =  7.40525e+00
>     c     =  9.99906e+00
>     ibrav = 4
>     nat   = 19
>     ntyp  = 2
>     ecutwfc = 45.0 ,
> ecutrho = 450.0 ,
> input_DFT = 'PBE-D2' ,
> occupations = 'smearing' ,
> degauss = 1.0d-4 ,
> vdw_corr = 'Grimme-D2'
> assume_isolated = 'mt'
> smearing = 'marzari-vanderbilt' ,
> /
>
> &ELECTRONS
> conv_thr = 1.0d-7 ,
> electron_maxstep = 1000
> mixing_mode = 'plain' ,
> mixing_beta = 0.3d0 ,
> /
>
> &IONS
> ion_dynamics='bfgs'
> upscale=20.0
> /
>
> &CELL
> /
>
> K_POINTS {automatic}
>  3  3  3  0 0 0
>
> ATOMIC_SPECIES
> C      12.01070  C.pbe-n-kjpaw_psl.1.0.0.UPF
> H       1.00794  H.pbe-kjpaw_psl.1.0.0.UPF
> ATOMIC_POSITIONS {angstrom}
> C        1.280642168   0.685951341  -0.000431048
> C       -1.236653977   3.539880413  -0.001566184
> C       -0.000377617   2.903279130  -0.002911997
> C       -2.489554615   5.710262290  -0.000852594
> C       -1.229721248   4.990709007  -0.000338911
> C        2.449440629   1.438897112   0.002319254
> C        3.702198081   0.707454065  -0.001265064
> C        1.236237242   3.539760579   0.000958837
> C        2.478517989   2.856386275   0.004841971
> C       -0.000246038   5.700684987  -0.000997560
> C        1.229347070   4.990770096  -0.000716604
> C        4.955272233   1.438694069  -0.002138838
> C        6.124721243   0.686321393   0.000987763
> C        3.702044434   3.562937903   0.001926384
> C        4.925831271   2.856536000  -0.001755553
> C        2.489209922   5.710445901  -0.000342579
> C        3.702309214   4.976078918  -0.000048704
> H        3.360489134   2.350036356  -3.014528460
> H        2.719672863   2.741584163  -3.037540110
>
>
> Graphen
> &CONTROL
>     calculation   = "scf"
>     forc_conv_thr =  1.00000e-03
>     max_seconds   =  1.72800e+05
>     nstep         = 1000
>     verbosity='high'
>     restart_mode='from_scratch'
>     iprint=1
>     tprnfor=.true.
>  pseudo_dir = '/lfs01/Val/cairo010u1/Test/pseudo',
> outdir='/lfs01/workdirs/Val/Test/Out/G',
> /
>
> &SYSTEM
>     a     =  7.40525e+00
>     c     =  9.99906e+00
>     ibrav = 4
>     nat   = 17
>     ntyp  = 1
>     ecutwfc = 45.0 ,
> ecutrho = 450.0 ,
> input_DFT = 'PBE-D2' ,
> occupations = 'smearing' ,
> degauss = 1.0d-4 ,
> vdw_corr = 'Grimme-D2'
> assume_isolated = 'mt'
> smearing = 'marzari-vanderbilt' ,
> /
>
> &ELECTRONS
> conv_thr = 1.0d-10 ,
> electron_maxstep = 1000
> mixing_mode = 'plain' ,
> mixing_beta = 0.3d0 ,
> /
>
> &IONS
> ion_dynamics='bfgs'
> upscale=20.0
> /
>
> &CELL
> /
>
> K_POINTS {automatic}
>  3  3  3  0 0 0
>
> ATOMIC_SPECIES
> C      12.01070  C.pbe-n-kjpaw_psl.1.0.0.UPF
>
> ATOMIC_POSITIONS {angstrom}
> C        1.280642168   0.685951341  -0.000431048
> C       -1.236653977   3.539880413  -0.001566184
> C       -0.000377617   2.903279130  -0.002911997
> C       -2.489554615   5.710262290  -0.000852594
> C       -1.229721248   4.990709007  -0.000338911
> C        2.449440629   1.438897112   0.002319254
> C        3.702198081   0.707454065  -0.001265064
> C        1.236237242   3.539760579   0.000958837
> C        2.478517989   2.856386275   0.004841971
> C       -0.000246038   5.700684987  -0.000997560
> C        1.229347070   4.990770096  -0.000716604
> C        4.955272233   1.438694069  -0.002138838
> C        6.124721243   0.686321393   0.000987763
> C        3.702044434   3.562937903   0.001926384
> C        4.925831271   2.856536000  -0.001755553
> C        2.489209922   5.710445901  -0.000342579
> C        3.702309214   4.976078918  -0.000048704
>
>
>
> Hydrogen
> &CONTROL
>     calculation   = "scf"
>     forc_conv_thr =  1.00000e-03
>     max_seconds   =  1.72800e+05
>     nstep         = 1000
>     verbosity='high'
>     restart_mode='from_scratch'
>     iprint=1
>     tprnfor=.true.
>  pseudo_dir = '/lfs01/workdirs/Val/Test/pseudo',
> outdir='/lfs01/workdirs/Val/Test/Out/HY',
> /
>
> &SYSTEM
>     a     =  7.40525e+00
>     c     =  9.99906e+00
>     ibrav = 4
>     nat   = 2
>     ntyp  = 1
>     ecutwfc = 45.0 ,
> ecutrho = 450.0 ,
> input_DFT = 'PBE-D2' ,
> occupations = 'smearing' ,
> degauss = 1.0d-4 ,
> vdw_corr = 'Grimme-D2'
> assume_isolated = 'mt'
> smearing = 'marzari-vanderbilt' ,
>
> /
>
> &ELECTRONS
> conv_thr = 1.0d-7 ,
> electron_maxstep = 1000
> mixing_mode = 'plain' ,
> mixing_beta = 0.3d0 ,
> /
>
> &IONS
> ion_dynamics='bfgs'
> upscale=20.0
> /
>
> &CELL
> /
>
> K_POINTS {automatic}
>  3  3  3  0 0 0
>
> ATOMIC_SPECIES
> H       1.00794  H.pbe-kjpaw_psl.1.0.0.UPF
> ATOMIC_POSITIONS {angstrom}
> H        3.360489134   2.350036356  -3.014528460
> H        2.719672863   2.741584163  -3.037540110
>
>
> On Wed, 5 Dec 2018 at 21:09, Stefano Baroni <baroni at sissa.it> wrote:
>
>> I know nothing about your system, but what you report simply seem the
>> evidence of an endothermal adsorption, stabilized by a  energy barrier.
>> Have you got strong reasons to believe that this cannot be the case?
>> Regards, Stefano B
>>
>> ___
>> Stefano Baroni, Trieste -- http://stefano.baroni.me
>>
>> > On 5 Dec 2018, at 18:45, Mohamed Safy <msafy505 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Dear QE users
>> > I am trying to study the adsorption of a negatively charged molecule on
>> a core of polymer. The relaxed cell showed the formation of four hydrogen
>> bonds (with O...H distance range between 1.7 and 1.95 angstrom). But, when
>> I calculated the adsorption energy I found it a positive value (44
>> kcal/mol). any advice or suggestion please.
>> > Thanks in advance
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > users mailing list
>> > users at lists.quantum-espresso.org
>> > https://lists.quantum-espresso.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>



GIUSEPPE MATTIOLI
CNR - ISTITUTO DI STRUTTURA DELLA MATERIA
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I-00015 - Monterotondo Scalo (RM)
Mob (*preferred*) +39 373 7305625
Tel + 39 06 90672342 - Fax +39 06 90672316
E-mail: <giuseppe.mattioli at ism.cnr.it>



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