Fast vibrational calculation of anharmonic OH-stretch frequencies for two low-energy noradrenaline conformers

We introduce a new reduced-coupling technique to accelerate direct calculations of a selected number of vibrational frequencies in large molecular systems. Our method combines the advantages of the single-to-all correlation-corrected vibrational self-consistent field (STA-CC-VSCF) approach [D. M. Benoit, J. Chem. Phys. 125, 244110 (2006)] with those of the fast-CC-VSCF technique [D. M. Benoit, J. Chem. Phys. 120, 562 (2004)] and allows the ab initio calculation of only the relevant parts of the required potential energy surface (PES). We demonstrate, using a set of five aliphatic alcohol molecules, that the new fast-STA-CC-VSCF method is accurate and leads to very substantial time gains for the computations of the PES. We then use the fast-STA-CC-VSCF method to accelerate the computation of the OH-stretch and NH-stretch frequencies of the two lowest-energy conformers of noradrenaline, namely, AG1a and GG1a. Our new approach enables us to run the calculation 89 times faster than the standard CC-VSCF technique and makes it possible to use a high-level MP2/TZP description of the PES. We demonstrate that the influence of the strong mode-mode couplings is crucial for a realistic description of the particular OH-stretch vibrational signature of each conformer. Finally, of the two possible low-energy conformers, we identify AG1a as the one most likely to have been observed in the experiments of Snoek [Mol. Phys. 101, 1239 (2003)]

Vibrational signature of a single water molecule adsorbed on Pt(111): toward a reliable anharmonic description

In this study, we present a thorough benchmarking of our direct anharmonic vibrational variation-perturbation approach for adsorbed molecules on surfaces. We then use our method to describe the vibrational structure of a water molecule adsorbed on a Pt(111) surface and compare our results with the available experimental data. By using an explicitly correlated hybrid method to describe the molecule-surface interaction, we improve on the initial periodic PBE/DZP potential energy landscape and obtain vibrational frequencies that are of near-experimental accuracy. We introduce an implementation of anharmonic z-polarized IR intensity calculation and explain the absence of antisymmetric O-H stretch in the experimental data for the adsorbed water molecule, while the symmetric O-H stretch is predicted to be visible

Vibrational anharmonicity of small gold and silver clusters using the VSCF method

We study the vibrational spectra of small neutral gold (Au2–Au10) and silver (Ag2–Au5) clusters using the vibrational self-consistent field method (VSCF) in order to account for anharmonicity. We report harmonic, VSCF, and correlation-corrected VSCF calculations obtained using a vibrational configuration interaction approach (VSCF/VCI). Our implementation of the method is based on an efficient calculation of the potential energy surfaces (PES), using periodic density functional theory (DFT) with a plane-wave pseudopotential basis. In some cases, we use an efficient technique (fast-VSCF) assisted by the Voter–Chen potential in order to get an efficient reduction of the number of pair-couplings between modes. This allows us to efficiently reduce the computing time of 2D-PES without degrading the accuracy. We found that anharmonicity of the gold clusters is very small with maximum rms deviations of about 1 cm−1, although for some particular modes anharmonicity reaches values slightly larger than 2 cm−1. Silver clusters show slightly larger anharmonicity. In both cases, large differences between calculated and experimental vibrational frequencies (when available) stem more likely from the quality of the electronic structure method used than from vibrational anharmonicity. We show that noble gas embedding often affects the vibrational properties of these clusters more than anharmonicity, and discuss our results in the context of experimental studies

The nature and role of the gold-krypton interactions in small neutral gold clusters

© 2015 American Chemical Society. We investigate the nature and role of krypton embedding in small neutral gold clusters. For some of these clusters, we observe a particular site-dependent character of the Kr binding that does not completely follow the criterion of binding at low-coordinated sites, widely accepted for interaction of a noble gas with closed-shell metal systems such as metal surfaces. We aim at understanding the effect of low dimensionality and open-shell electronic structure of the odd-numbered clusters on the noble gas-metal cluster interaction. First, we investigate the role of attractive and repulsive forces, and the frontier molecular orbitals. Second, we investigate the Au-Kr interaction in terms of reactivity and bonding character. We use a reactivity index derived from Fukui formalism, and criteria provided by the electron localization function (ELF), in order to classify the type of bonding. We carry out this study on the minimum energy structures of neutral gold clusters, as obtained using pseudo potential plane-wave density functional theory (DFT). A model is proposed that includes the effect of attractive electrostatic, van der Waals and repulsive forces, together with effects originating from orbital overlap. This satisfactorily explains minimum configurations of the noble gas-gold cluster systems, the site preference of the noble gas atoms, and changes in electronic properties

Efficient correlation-corrected vibrational self-consistent field computation of OH-stretch frequencies using a low-scaling algorithm

The authors present a new computational scheme to perform accurate and fast direct correlation-corrected vibrational self-consistent field (CC-VSCF) computations for a selected number of vibrational modes, which is aimed at predicting a few vibrations in large molecular systems. The method is based on a systematic selection of vibrational mode-mode coupling terms, leading to the direct ab initio construction of a sparse potential energy surface. The computational scaling of the CC-VSCF computation on the generated surface is then further reduced by using a screening procedure for the correlation- correction contributions. The proposed method is applied to the computation of the OH-stretch frequency of five aliphatic alcohols. The authors investigate the influence of different pseudopotential and all-electron basis sets on the quality of the correlated potential energy surfaces computed and on the OH-stretch frequencies calculated for each surface. With the help of these test systems, the authors show that their method offers a computational scaling that is two orders of magnitude lower than a standard CC-VSCF method and that it is of equal accuracy. © 2006 American Institute of Physics

Does cage quantum delocalisation influence the translation-rotational bound states of molecular hydrogen in clathrate hydrate?

In this study, we examine the effect of a flexible description of the clathrate hydrate framework on the translation-rotation (TR) eigenstates of guest molecules such as molecular hydrogen. Traditionally, the water cage structure is assumed to be rigid, thus ignoring the quantum nature of hydrogen nuclei in the water framework. However, it has been shown that protons in a water molecule possess a marked delocalised character in many situations, ranging from water clusters to proton transfer in the bulk. In the case of water clathrates, all previous TR bound-state calculations of guest molecules consider that the caging water molecules are fixed at their equilibrium geometry. Only recently, a static investigation of the role of proton configurations was performed by Bačić and co-workers by sampling a very large number of different static structures of water clathrates. Here, we investigate the importance of the rotational degrees of freedom of the water cage on the TR levels of the guest molecule using an efficient adiabatic decoupling scheme. Our approach combines rigid body diffusion Monte Carlo calculations for the description of the rotational degree of freedom of water molecules surrounding the guest molecular hydrogen to an efficient Smolyak sparse-grid technique for the calculation of the TR levels. This approach allows us to take into account the highly anharmonic nature of the rotational water motions in a high-dimensional system. The clathrate-induced splittings of the j = 1 rotational levels are much more sensitive to the quantum hydrogen delocalisation than the translational transitions. This result is in good agreement with the previous static study of Bačić and co-workers

Adsorption of imidazole on Au(111) surface: Dispersion corrected density functional study

We use density functional theory in the generalized gradient approximation to study the adsorption of imidazole on the Au(111) surface and account for dispersion effect using Grimme's empirical dispersion correction technique. Our results show that the adsorption energy of imidazole depends on the slab size and on the adsorption site. In agreement with other studies, we find the largest adsorption energy for imidazole on a top site of Au(111). However, we also note that the adsorption energy at other sites is substantial

An alternative methodology to assess the quality of empirical potentials for small gold clusters

We present a methodology based on local comparisons of potential energy surfaces (PES) in order to assess the quality of empirical potentials. We compare five typical empirical potentials using a criterion that shows which of these potentials resembles better a PES obtained with a high-level electronic structure method. The methodology relies on a many-body expansion in terms of normal coordinates of both the empirical and high-level theory PES. Then we investigate in a systematical way, how the features of the reference high-level theory PES are reproduced by each empirical potential in the vicinity of a given minimum energy structure. We use plane-wave density functional theory (DFT) as a reference, in particular the Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE) exchange–correlation functional and an ultrasoft Vanderbilt pseudo potential. This study is carried out on neutral gold clusters with up to five atoms

The vibrational properties of benzene on an ordered water ice surface

We present a hybrid CCSD(T) + PBE-D3 approach to calculating the vibrational signatures for gas-phase benzene and benzene adsorbed on an ordered water ice surface. We compare the results of our method against experimentally recorded spectra and calculations performed using PBE-D3-only approaches (harmonic and anharmonic). Calculations use a proton ordered XIh water ice surface consisting of 288 water molecules, and results are compared against experimental spectra recorded for an ASW ice surface. We show the importance of including a water ice surface into spectroscopic calculations, owing to the resulting differences in vibrational modes, frequencies, and intensities of transitions seen in the IR spectrum. The overall intensity pattern shifts from a dominating ?11 band in the gas-phase to several high-intensity carriers for an IR spectrum of adsorbed benzene. When used for adsorbed benzene, the hybrid approach presented here achieves an RMSD for IR active modes of 21 cm-1, compared to 72 cm-1 and 49 cm-1 for the anharmonic and harmonic PBE-D3 approaches, respectively. Our hybrid model for gaseous benzene also achieves the best results when compared to experiment, with an RMSD for IR active modes of 24 cm-1, compared to 55 cm-1 and 31 cm-1 for the anharmonic and harmonic PBE-D3 approaches, respectively. To facilitate assignment, we generate and provide a correspondence graph between the normal modes of the gaseous and adsorbed benzene molecules. Finally, we calculate the frequency shifts, ??, of adsorbed benzene relative to its gas-phase to highlight the effects of surface interactions on vibrational bands and evaluate the suitability of our chosen dispersion-corrected density functional theory