Publications by Alfredo Pasquarello

Many-body screening effects in liquid water

Arnaud Guillaume Lorin, Alfredo Pasquarello, Igor Reshetnyak

The screening arising from many-body excitations is a crucial quantity for describing absorption and inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS) of materials. Similarly, the electron screening plays a critical role in state-of-the-art approaches for determining the fundamental band gap. However, ab initio studies of the screening in liquid water have remained limited. Here, we use a combined analysis based on the Bethe-Salpeter equation and time-dependent density functional theory. We first show that absorption spectra at near-edge energies are insufficient to assess the accuracy by which the screening is described. Next, when the energy range under scrutiny is extended, we instead find that the IXS spectra are highly sensitive and allow for the selection of the optimal theoretical scheme. This leads to good agreement with experiment over a large range of transferred energies and momenta, and enables establishing the elusive fundamental band gap of liquid water at 9.3 eV. Electron screening is crucial to interpret inelastic X-ray scattering experiments in materials. Here the authors use a combined analysis based on the Bethe-Salpeter equation and time-dependent density functional theory to calculate the dielectric function and obtain the band gap of liquid water.

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

Polaron hopping through piecewise-linear functionals

Stefano Falletta, Alfredo Pasquarello

We use piecewise-linear functionals to study the polaron energy landscape and hopping rates in beta-Ga2O3, which we adopt as an example of an anisotropic material hosting multiple polaronic states. We illustrate various functionals for polaron localization, including a hybrid functional and two types of semilocal functionals, and discuss how to ensure the piecewise-linearity condition. Then, we determine the formation energies of stable polarons, and show that single-site and multisite polaronic states can be found in close energetic competition. We calculate the hyperfine and superhyperfine parameters associated with each polaron, and discuss the comparison with experiment. Next, we perform nudged-elastic-band calculations to determine energy landscapes and hole transfer rates of all first-nearest-neighbor polaron hoppings. We show that when the piecewise-linearity condition is ensured polaron properties are robust upon variation of the functional adopted, including formation energies, energy barriers, and charge transfer rates. This supports the use of semilocal functionals for calculating polaron transport properties.

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2023

Accurate and efficient band-gap predictions for metal halide perovskites at finite temperature

Thomas Bischoff, Patrick Gono, Alfredo Pasquarello, Aleksei Tal, Haiyuan Wang

We develop a computationally efficient scheme to accurately determine finite-temperature band gaps for metal halide perovskites belonging to the class ABX(3) (A = Rb, Cs; B = Ge, Sn, Pb; and X = F, Cl, Br, I). First, an initial estimate of the band gap is provided for the ideal crystalline structure through the use of a range-separated hybrid functional, in which the parameters are determined non-empirically from the electron density and the high-frequency dielectric constant. Next, we consider two kinds of band-gap corrections to account for spin-orbit coupling and thermal vibrations including zero-point motions. In particular, the latter effect is accounted for through the special displacement method, which consists in using a single distorted configuration obtained from the vibrational frequencies and eigenmodes, thereby avoiding lengthy molecular dynamics. The sequential consideration of both corrections systematically improves the band gaps, reaching a mean absolute error of 0.17 eV with respect to experimental values. The computational efficiency of our scheme stems from the fact that only a single calculation at the hybrid-functional level is required and that it is sufficient to evaluate the corrections at the semilocal level of theory. Our scheme is thus convenient for the screening of large databases of metal halide perovskites, including large-size systems.

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Hubbard U through polaronic defect states

Stefano Falletta, Alfredo Pasquarello

Since the preliminary work of Anisimov and co-workers, the Hubbard corrected DFT+U functional has been used for predicting properties of correlated materials by applying on-site effective Coulomb interactions to specific orbitals. However, the determination of the Hubbard U parameter has remained under intense discussion despite the multitude of approaches proposed. Here, we define a selection criterion based on the use of polaronic defect states for the enforcement of the piecewise linearity of the total energy upon electron occupation. A good agreement with results from piecewise linear hybrid functionals is found for the electronic and structural properties of polarons, including the formation energies. The values of U determined in this way are found to give a robust description of the polaron energetics upon variation of the considered state. In particular, we also address a polaron hopping pathway, finding that the determined value of U leads to accurate energetics without requiring a configurational-dependent U. It is emphasized that the selection of U should be based on physical properties directly associated with the orbitals to which U is applied, rather than on more global properties such as band gaps and band widths. For comparison, we also determine U through a well-established linear-response scheme finding noticeably different values of U and consequently different formation energies. Possible origins of these discrepancies are discussed. As case studies, we consider the self-trapped electron in BiVO4, the self-trapped hole in MgO, the Li-trapped hole in MgO, and the Al-trapped hole in alpha-SiO2.

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

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We address the many-body self-interaction in relation to polarons in density functional theory. Our study provides (i) a unified theoretical framework encompassing many-body and one-body forms of self-interaction and (ii) an efficient semilocal scheme for charge localization. Our theoretical formulation establishes a quantitative connection between the many-body and one-body forms of self-interaction in terms of electron screening, thereby conferring superiority to the concept of many-body self-interaction. Our semilocal methodology involves the use of a weak localized potential and applies equally to electron and hole polarons. We find that polarons free from many-body self-interaction have formation energies that are robust with respect to the functional adopted.

2022

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We present an efficient procedure for constructing nonempirical hybrid functionals to accurately predict band gaps of extended systems. We determine mixing parameters by enforcing the generalized Koopmans’ condition on localized electron states, which are achieved by inserting an optimized potential probe. Application of this scheme to a large set of materials yields band gaps with a mean error of 0.30 eV with respect to experiment. Next, we consider a perturbative one-shot approach in which the single-particle eigenvalues are calculated with the wave functions obtained at the semilocal level. In this way, the computational cost is reduced by ∼85% without loss of accuracy. The scheme is found to be robust upon consideration of different defect species and functional forms.

2022

Oxygen Evolution at the BiVO4-Water Interface: Mechanism of the Water Dehydrogenation Reaction

Sai Lyu, Alfredo Pasquarello, Julia Anna Wiktor

We study the water dehydrogenation reaction at the BiVO4(010)-water interface by combining nudged-elastic-band calculations and electronic structure calculations at the hybrid functional level. We investigate the pathway and the kinetic barrier for the adiabatic reaction going from the hole polaron localized in BiVO4 to the dehydrogenation of the adsorbed water molecule at the interface. The reaction is found to involve the H2O center dot+ radical cation as an intermediate, to have a kinetic barrier of 0.7 eV, and to be initiated by the electron transfer. The calculated kinetic barrier is in good agreement with experiment and is consistent with the slow hole transfer kinetics observed at the surface of BiVO4. To characterize the structural changes occurring during this process, we analyze the O-H distances for three relevant water molecules. We also examine the Wannier functions around the O atom of the adsorbate involved in the reaction to reveal the changes in the electronic structure during the hole hopping. The projected density of states of the lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals allows us to identify the atomic orbitals that are primarily involved in the reaction. We expect that the proposed reaction mechanism generally holds when the surface coverage is dominated by molecularly adsorbed water.

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2022

Polarons free from many-body self-interaction in density functional theory

Stefano Falletta, Alfredo Pasquarello

We develop a unified theoretical framework encompassing one-body and many-body forms of self-interaction. We find an analytic expression for both the one-body and the many-body self-interaction energies, and quantitatively connect the two expressions through the dielectric constant. The two forms of self-interaction are found to coincide in the absence of electron screening. This analysis confers superiority to the notion of many-body self-interaction over the notion of one-body self-interaction. Next, we develop a semilocal density functional scheme that addresses the many-body self-interaction of polarons, thereby overcoming the limitations of standard density functional theory. Polaron localization is achieved through the addition of a weak local potential in the Kohn-Sham Hamiltonian that enforces the piece-wise linearity of the total energy upon partial electron occupation. Our method equivalently applies to electron and hole polarons and does not require any constraint on the wave functions during the self-consistent optimization. The implementation of this scheme does not produce any computational overhead compared to standard semilocal calculations and achieves fast convergence. This approach results in polaron properties, including the atomic geometry, the electron density, and the formation energy, which are close to those achieved with a hybrid functional that similarly satisfies the piece-wise linearity condition. This suggests that addressing the many-body self-interaction results in a polaron description that is robust with respect to the functional adopted. We illustrate our approach through applications to the electron polaron in BiVO4 , the hole polaron in MgO, and the hole trapped at the Al impurity in α-SiO2.

2022

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The temperature-dependent properties of the aqueous electron have been extensively studied using mixed quantum-classical simulations in a wide range of thermodynamic conditions based on one-electron pseudopotentials. While the cavity model appears to explain most of the physical properties of the aqueous electron, only a non-cavity model has so far been successful in accounting for the temperature dependence of the absorption spectrum. Here, we present an accurate and efficient description of the aqueous electron under various thermodynamic conditions by combining hybrid functional-based molecular dynamics, machine learning techniques, and multiple time-step methods. Our advanced simulations accurately describe the temperature dependence of the absorption maximum in the presence of cavity formation. Specifically, our work reveals that the red shift of the absorption maximum results from an increasing gyration radius with temperature, rather than from global density variations as previously suggested.

WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH2022

Band gaps of liquid water and hexagonal ice through advanced electronic-structure calculations

Thomas Bischoff, Alfredo Pasquarello, Igor Reshetnyak

The fundamental band gaps of liquid water and hexagonal ice are calculated through advanced electronicstructure methods. We compare specifically the performance of state-of-the-art GW calculations with nonempirical hybrid functionals. For the latter, we fix the free parameters either through the dielectric response of the material or through enforcing Koopmans' condition to localized states. The various approaches yield consistent band gaps, in good agreement with available experimental references. Furthermore, we discuss the critical aspects of each approach that underlie the band-gap predictions.

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2021