Perspective: Computational chemistry software and its advancement as illustrated through three grand challenge cases for molecular science.

The field of computational molecular sciences (CMSs) has made innumerable contributions to the understanding of the molecular phenomena that underlie and control chemical processes, which is manifested in a large number of community software projects and codes. The CMS community is now poised to take the next transformative steps of better training in modern software design and engineering methods and tools, increasing interoperability through more systematic adoption of agreed upon standards and accepted best-practices, overcoming unnecessary redundancy in software effort along with greater reproducibility, and increasing the deployment of new software onto hardware platforms from in-house clusters to mid-range computing systems through to modern supercomputers. This in turn will have future impact on the software that will be created to address grand challenge science that we illustrate here: the formulation of diverse catalysts, descriptions of long-range charge and excitation transfer, and development of structural ensembles for intrinsically disordered proteins.

Ab initio calculations for industrial materials engineering: successes and challenges.

Computational materials science based on ab initio calculations has become an important partner to experiment. This is demonstrated here for the effect of impurities and alloying elements on the strength of a Zr twist grain boundary, the dissociative adsorption and diffusion of iodine on a zirconium surface, the diffusion of oxygen atoms in a Ni twist grain boundary and in bulk Ni, and the dependence of the work function of a TiN-HfO(2) junction on the replacement of N by O atoms. In all of these cases, computations provide atomic-scale understanding as well as quantitative materials property data of value to industrial research and development. There are two key challenges in applying ab initio calculations, namely a higher accuracy in the electronic energy and the efficient exploration of large parts of the configurational space. While progress in these areas is fueled by advances in computer hardware, innovative theoretical concepts combined with systematic large-scale computations will be needed to realize the full potential of ab initio calculations for industrial applications.

Integrated experimental-theoretical investigation of the Na-Li-Al-H system.

First-principles modeling, experimental, and thermodynamic methodologies were integrated to facilitate a fundamentally guided investigation of quaternary complex hydride compounds within the bialkali Na-Li-Al-H hydrogen storage system. The integrated approach has broad utility for the discovery, understanding, and optimization of solid-state chemical systems. Density functional theory ground-state minimizations, low-temperature powder neutron diffraction, and low-temperature synchrotron X-ray diffraction were coupled to refine the crystallographic structures for various low-temperature distorted Na2LiAlH6 allotropes. Direct method lattice dynamics were used to identify a stable Na2LiAlH6 allotrope for thermodynamic property predictions. The results were interpreted to propose transformation pathways between this allotrope and the less stable cubic allotrope observed at room temperature. The calculated bialkali dissociation pressure relationships were compared with those determined from pressure-composition-isotherm experiments to validate the predicted thermodynamic properties. These predictions enabled computational thermodynamic modeling of Na2LiAlH6 and competing lower order phases within the Na-Li-Al-H system over a wide of temperature and pressure conditions. The predictions were substantiated by experimental observations of varying Na2LiAlH6 dehydrogenation behavior with temperature. The modeling was used to identify the most favorable reaction pathways and equilibrium products for H discharge/recharge in the Na-Li-Al-H system, and to design conditions that maximize the theoretical hydrogen reversibility within the Na-Li-Al-H system.

Symmetry-general ab initio computation of physical properties using quantum software integrated with crystal structure databases: results and perspectives.

The timely integration of crystal structure databases, such as CRYSTMET, ICSD etc., with quantum software, like VASP, OresteS, ElectrA etc., allows ab initio cell and structure optimization on existing pure-phase compounds to be performed seamlessly with just a few mouse clicks. Application to the optimization of rough structure models, and possibly new atomic arrangements, is detailed. The ability to reproduce observed cell data can lead to an assessment of the intrinsic plausibility of a structure model, even without a competing model. The accuracy of optimized atom positions is analogous to that from routine powder studies. Recently, the ab initio symmetry-general least-squares extraction of the coefficients of the elastic tensor for pure-phase materials using data from corresponding entries in crystal structure databases was automated. A selection of highly encouraging results is presented, stressing the complementarity of simulation and experiment. Additional physical properties also appear to be computable using existing quantum software under the guidance of an automation scheme designed following the above automation for the elastic tensor. This possibility creates the exciting perspective of mining crystal structure databases for new materials with combinations of physical properties that were never measured before. Crystal structure databases can accordingly be expected to become the cornerstone of materials science research within a very few years, adding immense practical value to the archived structure data.