Stable Surfaces That Bind Too Tightly: Can Range-Separated Hybrids or DFT+U Improve Paradoxical Descriptions of Surface Chemistry?
Name
acs.jpclett.9b01650.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.12 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7abf07aef714a264b042e23d2d2bf37d
Author(s)
Zhao, Qing
Kulik, Heather Janine
Date Issued
August 2019
Journal
Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Citation
Zhao, Qing and Heather J. Kulik. "Stable Surfaces That Bind Too Tightly: Can Range-Separated Hybrids or DFT+U Improve Paradoxical Descriptions of Surface Chemistry?." Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 10, 17 (August 2019): 5090-5098 © 2019 American Chemical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Approximate, semilocal density functional theory (DFT) suffers from delocalization error that can lead to a paradoxical model of catalytic surfaces that both overbind adsorbates yet are also too stable. We investigate the effect of two widely applied approaches for delocalization error correction, (i) affordable DFT+U (i.e., semilocal DFT augmented with a Hubbard U) and (ii) hybrid functionals with an admixture of Hartree-Fock (HF) exchange, on surface and adsorbate energies across a range of rutile transition metal oxides widely studied for their promise as water-splitting catalysts. We observe strongly row- A nd period-dependent trends with DFT+U, which increases surface formation energies only in early transition metals (e.g., Ti and V) and decreases adsorbate energies only in later transition metals (e.g., Ir and Pt). Both global and local hybrids destabilize surfaces and reduce adsorbate binding across the periodic table, in agreement with higher-level reference calculations. Density analysis reveals why hybrid functionals correct both quantities, whereas DFT+U does not. We recommend local, range-separated hybrids for the accurate modeling of catalysis in transition metal oxides at only a modest increase in computational cost over semilocal DFT.
Subjects
General Materials Science
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b01650
