Computational Thermochemistry and Benchmarking of Reliable Methods

During the first and second years of the Computational Thermochemistry and Benchmarking of Reliable Methods project, we completed several studies using the parallel computing capabilities of the NWChem software and Molecular Science Computing Facility (MSCF), including large-scale density functional theory (DFT), second-order Moeller-Plesset (MP2) perturbation theory, and CCSD(T) calculations. During the third year, we continued to pursue the computational thermodynamic and benchmarking studies outlined in our proposal. With the issues affecting the robustness of the coupled cluster part of NWChem resolved, we pursued studies of the heats-of-formation of compounds containing 5 to 7 first- and/or second-row elements and approximately 10 to 14 hydrogens. The size of these systems, when combined with the large basis sets (cc-pVQZ and aug-cc-pVQZ) that are necessary for extrapolating to the complete basis set limit, creates a formidable computational challenge, for which NWChem on NWMPP1 is well suited