[en] The role of defects in the chemical activity of the rutile TiO_2(110) surface remains a rich topic of research, despite the rutile (110) being one of the most studied surfaces of transition-metal oxides. Here, we present results from hybrid functional calculations that reconcile apparently disparate views on the impact of donor defects, such as oxygen vacancies and hydrogen impurities, on the electronic structure of the (110) rutile surface. We find that the bridging oxygen vacancy and adsorbed or substitutional hydrogen are actually shallow donors, which do not induce gap states. The excess electrons from these donor centers tend to localize in the form of small polarons, which are the factual cause of the deep states ∼1 eV below the conduction band, often observed in photoelectron spectroscopy measurements. Our results offer a new framework for understanding the surface electronic structure of TiO_2 and related oxides.

[en] Sparse matter is abundant and has both strong local bonds and weak nonbonding forces, in particular nonlocal van der Waals (vdW) forces between atoms separated by empty space. It encompasses a broad spectrum of systems, like soft matter, adsorption systems and biostructures. Density-functional theory (DFT), long since proven successful for dense matter, seems now to have come to a point, where useful extensions to sparse matter are available. In particular, a functional form, vdW-DF (Dion et al 2004 Phys. Rev. Lett. 92 246401; Thonhauser et al 2007 Phys. Rev. B 76 125112), has been proposed for the nonlocal correlations between electrons and applied to various relevant molecules and materials, including to those layered systems like graphite, boron nitride and molybdenum sulfide, to dimers of benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), doped benzene, cytosine and DNA base pairs, to nonbonding forces in molecules, to adsorbed molecules, like benzene, naphthalene, phenol and adenine on graphite, alumina and metals, to polymer and carbon nanotube (CNT) crystals, and hydrogen storage in graphite and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and to the structure of DNA and of DNA with intercalators. Comparison with results from wavefunction calculations for the smaller systems and with experimental data for the extended ones show the vdW-DF path to be promising. This could have great ramifications.

[en] Electronic structure calculations have become an indispensable tool in many areas of materials science and quantum chemistry. Even though the Kohn-Sham formulation of the density-functional theory (DFT) simplifies the many-body problem significantly, one is still confronted with several numerical challenges. In this article we present the projector augmented-wave (PAW) method as implemented in the GPAW program package (https://wiki.fysik.dtu.dk/gpaw) using a uniform real-space grid representation of the electronic wavefunctions. Compared to more traditional plane wave or localized basis set approaches, real-space grids offer several advantages, most notably good computational scalability and systematic convergence properties. However, as a unique feature GPAW also facilitates a localized atomic-orbital basis set in addition to the grid. The efficient atomic basis set is complementary to the more accurate grid, and the possibility to seamlessly switch between the two representations provides great flexibility. While DFT allows one to study ground state properties, time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) provides access to the excited states. We have implemented the two common formulations of TDDFT, namely the linear-response and the time propagation schemes. Electron transport calculations under finite-bias conditions can be performed with GPAW using non-equilibrium Green functions and the localized basis set. In addition to the basic features of the real-space PAW method, we also describe the implementation of selected exchange-correlation functionals, parallelization schemes, ΔSCF-method, x-ray absorption spectra, and maximally localized Wannier orbitals. (topical review)