A new approach for performing Particle Mesh Ewald in ab initio quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) simulations with extended atomic orbital basis sets is presented. The new approach, the Ambient-Potential Composite Ewald (CEw) method, does not perform the QM/MM interaction with Mulliken charges nor electrostatically fit charges. Instead the nuclei and electron density interact direc...

The performance of six different density functionals (LDA, PBE, PBESOL, B3LYP, PBE0, and WC1LYP) in describing the infrared spectrum of forsterite, a crystalline periodic system with orthorhombic unit cell (28 atoms in the primitive cell, Pbmn space group), is investigated by using the periodic ab initio CRYSTAL09 code and an all-electron Gaussian-type basis set. The transverse optical (TO) bra...

Photoelectron spectra of early 3d-transition metal dioxide anions, ScO2−, TiO2−, VO2−, CrO2−, and MnO2−, are calculated using semilocal hybrid density functional theory (DFT) many-body perturbation within the GW approximation one-shot perturbative eigenvalue self-consistent formalisms. Different levels compared with each other available photoelectron spectra. We show that a PBE0 starting point ...

The spinel cobalt oxide Co3O4 is a magnetic semiconductor containing cobalt ions in Co2+ and Co3+ oxidation states. We have studied the electronic, magnetic, and bonding properties of Co3O4 using density functional theory (DFT) at the Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA), GGA+U, and PBE0 hybrid functional levels. The GGA correctly predicts Co3O4 to be a semiconductor but severely underestim...

Picoplatin, cis-[PtCl2(NH3)(2-picoline)], is a new promising anticancer agent undergoing clinical trials, which reveals high efficacy against many tumors and greatly reduced toxicity, in comparison to cisplatin. In this work, we present for the first time the Fourier-transform Raman and infrared spectra of picoplatin, in the region of 3500-50 cm(-1). The comprehensive theoretical studies on the...

Potential energy curves along the inter-planar coordinates have been calculated for the dimers of two perylene derivatives (PTCDI and PTCDA) by using MP2 and dispersion corrected DFT (DFT-D) methods with B3LYP, B97 and PBE0 density functionals. The performance of dispersion-correcting potentials (DCPs) for describing intermolecular van der Waals interactions was also tested in conjunction with ...

Oxo-dipeptides and thio-dipeptides are built via condensation between couples of amino acids and amino thioacids, the latter with the carbonyl oxygen replaced by an sp(2) sulfur. We explored via in silico methods (PBE0/6-31G(d,p) and PBE0/6-311G(d,p)) all the possible combinations and built 800 dipeptides, whose structures were fully optimized. Maps of condensation energies are presented to hig...

Activation of a strong aryl-Br bond of a halogenated vinylarene by nickel(0) is demonstrated in the presence of aryl-I containing substrates. eta2-Coordination of Ni(PEt3)2 to the C=C moiety of halogenated vinylarenes is kinetically preferable and is followed by an intramolecular aryl-halide bond activation process. This "ring-walking" process is quantitative and proceeds under mild reaction co...

In this work, we examine the performance of XYG3, a newly developed doubly hybrid density functional (Zhang, Xu, and Goddard III, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2009, 106, 4963), to calculate covalent bond dissociation enthalpy (BDE). We use 5 atoms, 32 molecular radicals, and 116 closed-shell molecules to set up 142 bond dissociation reactions. For the total of 148 heats of formation (HOFs) and 142 BD...

Extensive Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory (TD-DFT) calculations have been carried out in order to obtain a statistically meaningful analysis of the merits of a large number of functionals. To reach this goal, a very extended set of molecules (∼500 compounds, >700 excited states) covering a broad range of (bio)organic molecules and dyes have been investigated. Likewise, 29 functionals i...