Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
2
pubmed:dateCreated
2011-1-18
pubmed:abstractText
It is known that ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations of liquid water at ambient conditions, based on the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) to density functional theory (DFT), with commonly used functionals fail to produce structural and diffusive properties in reasonable agreement with experiment. This is true for canonical, constant temperature simulations where the density of the liquid is fixed to the experimental density. The equilibrium density, at ambient conditions, of DFT water has recently been shown by Schmidt et al. [J. Phys. Chem. B, 113, 11959 (2009)] to be underestimated by different GGA functionals for exchange and correlation, and corrected by the addition of interatomic pair potentials to describe van der Waals (vdW) interactions. In this contribution we present a DFT-AIMD study of liquid water using several GGA functionals as well as the van der Waals density functional (vdW-DF) of Dion et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 246401 (2004)]. As expected, we find that the density of water is grossly underestimated by GGA functionals. When a vdW-DF is used, the density improves drastically and the experimental diffusivity is reproduced without the need of thermal corrections. We analyze the origin of the density differences between all the functionals. We show that the vdW-DF increases the population of non-H-bonded interstitial sites, at distances between the first and second coordination shells. However, it excessively weakens the H-bond network, collapsing the second coordination shell. This structural problem is partially associated to the choice of GGA exchange in the vdW-DF. We show that a different choice for the exchange functional is enough to achieve an overall improvement both in structure and diffusivity.
pubmed:commentsCorrections
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:chemical
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Jan
pubmed:issn
1089-7690
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Electronic
pubmed:day
14
pubmed:volume
134
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
024516
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2011
pubmed:articleTitle
Density, structure, and dynamics of water: the effect of van der Waals interactions.
pubmed:affiliation
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-3800, USA.
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.