[QE-users] SCF calculation with no convergence

ykhuang at dicp.ac.cn ykhuang at dicp.ac.cn
Sat Jun 13 07:34:36 CEST 2020


Hello Khabbaz,

As I am just a beginner of QE, I can only share my limited, personal experience with you. Note that convergence is a quite general problem that maybe everyone will confront with, I recommend you to look up QE-forum: https://www.mail-archive.com/users@lists.quantum-espresso.org/.

1. spin-polarized calculation is not easy to converge as non-polarized ones, so if your structure is just built without any primary optimization, I suggest you perform non-polarized optimization first, although it may be of little help on improving convergence.

2. you can try different mixing_mode. In general, as suggested in QE forum, local-TF may work well for heterogeneous system, but that is not always true. Sometimes plain mode (also known as Broyden mixing) works better than local-TF. Also, the higher vacuum region you add, the harder will your system to converge.

3. you can also try different smearing, although gaussian smearing is default and may be the first recommended, sometimes fd smearing can help your system converge faster, but that all depends.

4. you may want to decrease mixing_beta, or modify mixing_dim, to tune the updating rate of density matrix.

5. set diagonalization = 'cg' will be of help but will be slower than Davidson.

6. note that your system has N element. I remember there was a discussion about one certain (old) kind of nitrogen pseudopotential cause convergence failure, maybe you can test different kinds of pseudopotential.




Best regards!

Yike Huang, PhD candidate.

Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, CAS, China.




-----原始邮件-----
发件人:"Coralie Khabbaz" <khabbaz.coralie at gmail.com>
发送时间:2020-06-13 01:13:33 (星期六)
收件人: users at lists.quantum-espresso.org
抄送:
主题: [QE-users] SCF calculation with no convergence


Hello,


I am doing an scf calculation on a tungsten nitride (WN) slab (catalyst), with a methane molecule 5 Angstrom away from the surface. The energy values are not converging, even after 533 iterations. The energy values are very negative, and then they increase to a positive value then decrease a lot again. Before building the supercell, I had a WN unit cell with 433 K-points. Then, I built the super cell by using a scaling of 333 and miller indices of 100. I tried using K points of 111 and 222 for my super cell, but the calculations didn't converge for both. 


This is the input file I am using:


&CONTROL
    calculation  = "scf"
    max_seconds  =  1.72800e+05
    pseudo_dir   = "/home/coralee/projects/def-jkopysci/coralee/.pseudopot"
    restart_mode = "from_scratch"
/


&SYSTEM
    a                         =  1.24907e+01
    angle1(1)                 =  0.00000e+00
    angle1(2)                 =  0.00000e+00
    angle2(1)                 =  0.00000e+00
    angle2(2)                 =  0.00000e+00
    b                         =  1.34803e+01
    c                         =  2.52767e+01
    cosab                     =  6.12323e-17
    cosac                     =  6.12323e-17
    cosbc                     = -1.85547e-01
    degauss                   =  1.00000e-02
    ecutrho                   =  2.70000e+02
    ecutwfc                   =  3.00000e+01
    ibrav                     = 14
    nat                       = 113
    nspin                     = 2
    ntyp                      = 4
    occupations               = "smearing"
    smearing                  = "gaussian"
    starting_magnetization(1) =  2.00000e-01
    starting_magnetization(2) =  6.00000e-01
    starting_magnetization(3) =  0.00000e+00
    starting_magnetization(4) =  0.00000e+00
/


&ELECTRONS
    conv_thr         =  1.00000e-06
    diagonalization  = "david"
    electron_maxstep = 528
    mixing_beta      =  4.00000e-01
    startingpot      = "atomic"
    startingwfc      = "atomic+random"
/


K_POINTS {automatic}
 2  2  2  0 0 0


ATOMIC_SPECIES
N      14.00674  N.pbe-n-rrkjus_psl.1.0.0.UPF
W     183.84000  W.pbe-spn-rrkjus_psl.1.0.0.UPF
C      12.01070  C.pbe-n-rrkjus_psl.1.0.0.UPF
H       1.00794  H.pbe-rrkjus_psl.1.0.0.UPF


ATOMIC_POSITIONS {angstrom}
N       2.481849   0.418242  14.837784
N       6.645429   0.418242  14.837784
N      10.809008   0.418242  14.837784
N       2.481849   4.911686  14.837784
N       6.645429   4.911686  14.837784
N      10.809008   4.911686  14.837784
N       2.481849   9.405131  14.837784
N       6.645429   9.405131  14.837784
N      10.809008   9.405131  14.837784
W       2.481849   2.628097  14.748648
W       6.645429   2.628097  14.748648
W      10.809008   2.628097  14.748648
W       2.481849   7.121541  14.748648
W       6.645429   7.121541  14.748648
W      10.809008   7.121541  14.748648
W       2.481849  -1.865347  14.748648
W       6.645429  -1.865347  14.748648
W      10.809008  -1.865347  14.748648
N       0.400059   3.110895  14.468179
N       4.563639   3.110895  14.468179
N       8.727218   3.110895  14.468179
N       0.400059   7.604339  14.468179
N       4.563639   7.604339  14.468179
N       8.727218   7.604339  14.468179
N       0.400059  -1.382549  14.468179
N       4.563639  -1.382549  14.468179
N       8.727218  -1.382549  14.468179
W       0.400059   0.783425  14.415413
W       4.563639   0.783425  14.415413
W       8.727218   0.783425  14.415413
W       0.400059   5.276869  14.415413
W       4.563639   5.276869  14.415413
W       8.727218   5.276869  14.415413
W       0.400059   9.770314  14.415413
W       4.563639   9.770314  14.415413
W       8.727218   9.770314  14.415413
N       2.481849   3.081849  12.630078  0 0 0
N       6.645429   3.081849  12.630078  0 0 0
N      10.809008   3.081849  12.630078  0 0 0
N       2.481849   7.575293  12.630078  0 0 0
N       6.645429   7.575293  12.630078  0 0 0
N      10.809008   7.575293  12.630078  0 0 0
N       2.481849  -1.411595  12.630078  0 0 0
N       6.645429  -1.411595  12.630078  0 0 0
N      10.809008  -1.411595  12.630078  0 0 0
W       2.481849   0.798260  12.540942  0 0 0
W       6.645429   0.798260  12.540942  0 0 0
W      10.809008   0.798260  12.540942  0 0 0
W       2.481849   5.291704  12.540942  0 0 0
W       6.645429   5.291704  12.540942  0 0 0
W      10.809008   5.291704  12.540942  0 0 0
W       2.481849   9.785148  12.540942  0 0 0
W       6.645429   9.785148  12.540942  0 0 0
W      10.809008   9.785148  12.540942  0 0 0
N       0.400059   1.281057  12.260473  0 0 0
N       4.563639   1.281057  12.260473  0 0 0
N       8.727218   1.281057  12.260473  0 0 0
N       0.400059   5.774502  12.260473  0 0 0
N       4.563639   5.774502  12.260473  0 0 0
N       8.727218   5.774502  12.260473  0 0 0
N       0.400059  10.267946  12.260473  0 0 0
N       4.563639  10.267946  12.260473  0 0 0
N       8.727218  10.267946  12.260473  0 0 0
W       0.400059   3.447032  12.207706  0 0 0
W       4.563639   3.447032  12.207706  0 0 0
W       8.727218   3.447032  12.207706  0 0 0
W       0.400059   7.940476  12.207706  0 0 0
W       4.563639   7.940476  12.207706  0 0 0
W       8.727218   7.940476  12.207706  0 0 0
W       0.400059  -1.046412  12.207706  0 0 0
W       4.563639  -1.046412  12.207706  0 0 0
W       8.727218  -1.046412  12.207706  0 0 0
N       2.481849   1.252012  10.422372  0 0 0
N       6.645429   1.252012  10.422372  0 0 0
N      10.809008   1.252012  10.422372  0 0 0
N       2.481849   5.745456  10.422372  0 0 0
N       6.645429   5.745456  10.422372  0 0 0
N      10.809008   5.745456  10.422372  0 0 0
N       2.481849  10.238900  10.422372  0 0 0
N       6.645429  10.238900  10.422372  0 0 0
N      10.809008  10.238900  10.422372  0 0 0
W       2.481849   3.461867  10.333236  0 0 0
W       6.645429   3.461867  10.333236  0 0 0
W      10.809008   3.461867  10.333236  0 0 0
W       2.481849   7.955311  10.333236  0 0 0
W       6.645429   7.955311  10.333236  0 0 0
W      10.809008   7.955311  10.333236  0 0 0
W       2.481849  -1.031577  10.333236  0 0 0
W       6.645429  -1.031577  10.333236  0 0 0
W      10.809008  -1.031577  10.333236  0 0 0
N       0.400059   3.944664  10.052766  0 0 0
N       4.563639   3.944664  10.052766  0 0 0
N       8.727218   3.944664  10.052766  0 0 0
N       0.400059   8.438108  10.052766  0 0 0
N       4.563639   8.438108  10.052766  0 0 0
N       8.727218   8.438108  10.052766  0 0 0
N       0.400059  -0.548780  10.052766  0 0 0
N       4.563639  -0.548780  10.052766  0 0 0
N       8.727218  -0.548780  10.052766  0 0 0
W       0.400059   1.617195  10.000000  0 0 0
W       4.563639   1.617195  10.000000  0 0 0
W       8.727218   1.617195  10.000000  0 0 0
W       0.400059   6.110639  10.000000  0 0 0
W       4.563639   6.110639  10.000000  0 0 0
W       8.727218   6.110639  10.000000  0 0 0
W       0.400059  10.604083  10.000000  0 0 0
W       4.563639  10.604083  10.000000  0 0 0
W       8.727218  10.604083  10.000000  0 0 0
C      10.809008   2.628097  19.750000
H      10.177000   1.997000  20.383000
H      11.443000   1.997000  19.117000
H      10.177000   3.263000  19.117000
H      11.443000   3.263000  20.383000







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