Accuracy of density functional theory in the prediction of carbon dioxide adsorbent materials

作者：Cazorla Claudio^*; Shevlin Stephen A

来源：Dalton Transactions, 2013, 42(13): 4670-4676.

DOI：10.1039/c3dt32713b

Density functional theory (DFT) has become the computational method of choice for modeling and characterization of carbon dioxide adsorbents, a broad family of materials which at present are urgently sought after for environmental applications. The description of polar carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules in low-coordinated environments like surfaces and porous materials, however, may be challenging for local and semi-local DFT approximations. Here, we present a thorough computational study in which the accuracy of DFT methods in describing the interactions of CO2 with model alkali-earth-metal (AEM, Ca and Li) decorated carbon structures, namely anthracene (C14H10) molecules, is assessed. We find that gas-adsorption energies and equilibrium structures obtained with standard (i.e. LDA and GGA), hybrid (i.e. PBE0 and B3LYP) and van der Waals exchange-correlation functionals of DFT dramatically differ from the results obtained with second-order Moller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2), an accurate computational quantum chemistry method. The major disagreements found can be mostly rationalized in terms of electron correlation errors that lead to wrong charge-transfer and electrostatic Coulomb interactions between CO2 and AEM-decorated anthracene molecules. Nevertheless, we show that when the concentration of AEM atoms in anthracene is tuned to resemble as closely as possible the electronic structure of AEM-decorated graphene (i.e. an extended two-dimensional material), hybrid exchange-correlation DFT and MP2 methods quantitatively provide similar results.

• 出版日期2013