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We present noncovalent quantum machine learning corrections to six physically motivated density functionals with systematic errors. We demonstrate that the missing massively nonlocal and nonadditive physical effects can be recovered by quantum machine learning models. The models seamlessly account for various types of noncovalent interactions and enable accurate predictions of dissociation curves. The correction improves the description of molecular two- and three-body interactions crucial in large water clusters and provides a reasonable atomic-resolution picture about the interaction energy errors of approximate density functionals that can be useful information in the development of more accurate density functionals. We show that given sufficient training instances the correction is more flexible than standard molecular mechanical dispersion corrections, and thus it can be applied for cases where many dispersion corrected density functionals fail, such as hydrogen bonding.

MRCC is a package of ab initio and density functional quantum chemistry programs for accurate electronic structure calculations. The suite has efficient implementations of both low- and high-level correlation methods, such as second-order Møller-Plesset (MP2), random-phase approximation (RPA), second-order algebraic-diagrammatic construction [ADC(2)], coupled-cluster (CC), configuration interaction (CI), and related techniques. It has a state-of-the-art CC singles and doubles with perturbative triples [CCSD(T)] code, and its specialties, the arbitrary-order iterative and perturbative CC methods developed by automated programming tools, enable achieving convergence with regard to the level of correlation. The package also offers a collection of multi-reference CC and CI approaches. Efficient implementations of density functional theory (DFT) and more advanced combined DFT-wave function approaches are also available. Its other special features, the highly competitive linear-scaling local correlation schemes, allow for MP2, RPA, ADC(2), CCSD(T), and higher-order CC calculations for extended systems. Local correlation calculations can be considerably accelerated by multi-level approximations and DFT-embedding techniques, and an interface to molecular dynamics software is provided for quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics calculations. All components of MRCC support shared-memory parallelism, and multi-node parallelization is also available for various methods. For academic purposes, the package is available free of charge.

Blending the good performance of the global hybrid PBE0 functional at short-range and the dual-hybrid dRPA75 functional at long range, we propose a new range-separated direct random phase approximation (dRPA75rs), which considerably improves on the accuracy of the calculated reaction energies and barrier heights compared to the parent approaches and provides a good description of noncovalent interactions without any dispersion correction. We also combine the new scheme with spin-component scaling (SCS-dRPA75rs), which enables the accurate calculation of energy differences for processes involving electron pair breaking, such as atomization. The new method scaling as the fourth power of the system size shows a balanced performance on a broad test set involving radicals, transition metal atoms, and heavy atoms, which makes it competitive with the best double-hybrid functionals based on the second-order perturbation theory. According to the results for the homogeneous electron gas, our dRPA75rs method expectedly gives errors for metallic systems similar to the dRPA approach with an additional error cancellation in the case of partial spin polarization.

Preserving the beneficial properties of the second-order screened exchange (SOSEX) method, such as its freedom from one-body self-correlation error, and its seamless treatment of long-range dispersion interaction, we construct new nonlocal functionals by down-scaling the higher-order terms in the SOSEX series to reduce the many-body self-correlation error in molecular systems. Our down-scaled SOSEX (dsSOSEX) and scaled equation SOSEX (seSOSEX) approaches deliver considerably more accurate noncovalent interaction energies, reaction energies, and barrier heights than the original SOSEX method. The dsSOSEX approach improves on the description of medium- and long-range correlation, for example, in isogyric processes, while the seSOSEX approach improves on the description of processes with short- and medium-range rearrangement in the electronic structure, such as atomization. The He 2 + potential energy curve shows that the many-body self-correlation error is slightly smaller in the dsSOSEX method than in the seSOSEX approach. Furthermore, the H 2 potential energy curve reveals that the static correlation error can also be reduced at medium range by the dsSOSEX and seSOSEX schemes. As our dsSOSEX method provides a better description of medium- and long-range correlation, it generally leads to more accurate energetics than the seSOSEX method; hence it should be preferred over the latter. We compare our results to other empirical and nonempirical direct random phase approximation (dRPA) and beyond-dRPA methods and also discuss the possibilities for further development.

We analyzed various possibilities to improve upon the SCAN meta-generalized gradient approximation density functional obeying all known properties of the exact functional that can be satisfied at this level of approximation. We examined the necessity of locally satisfying a strongly tightened lower bound for the exchange energy density in single-orbital regions, the nature of the error cancellation between the exchange and correlation parts in two-electron regions, and the effect of the fourth-order term in the gradient expansion of the correlation energy density. We have concluded that the functional can be modified to separately reproduce the exchange and correlation energies of the helium atom by locally releasing the strongly tightened lower bound for the exchange energy density in single-orbital regions, but this leads to an unbalanced improvement in the single-orbital electron densities. Therefore, we decided to keep the F X ≤ 1.174 exact condition for any single-orbital density, where F X is the exchange enhancement factor. However, we observed a general improvement in the single-orbital electron densities by revising the correlation functional form to follow the second-order gradient expansion in a wider range. Our new revSCAN functional provides more-accurate atomization energies for the systems with multireference character, compared to the SCAN functional. The nonlocal VV10 dispersion-corrected revSCAN functional yields more-accurate noncovalent interaction energies than the VV10-corrected SCAN functional. Furthermore, its global hybrid version with 25% of exact exchange, called revSCAN0, generally performs better than the similar SCAN0 for reaction barrier heights. Here, we also analyzed the possibility of the construction of a local hybrid from the SCAN exchange and a specific locally bounded nonconventional exact exchange energy density. We predict compatibility problems since this nonconventional exact exchange energy density does not really obey the strongly tightened lower bound for the exchange energy density in single-orbital regions.

Since its formal introduction, density functional theory has achieved many successes in the fields of molecular and solid-state chemistry. According to its central theorems, the ground state of a many-electron system is fully described by its electron density, and the exact functional minimizes the energy at the exact electron density. For many years of density functional development, it was assumed that the improvements in the energy are accompanied by the improvements in the density, and the approximations approach the exact functional. In a recent analysis ( Medvedev et al. Science 2017 , 355 , 49 - 52 .), it has been pointed out for 14 first row (Be-Ne) atoms and cations with 2, 4, or 10 electrons that the nowadays popular flexible but physically less rigorous approximate density functionals may provide large errors in the calculated electron densities despite the accurate energies. Although far-reaching conclusions have been drawn in this work, the methodology used by the authors may need improvements. Most importantly, their benchmark set was biased toward small atomic cations with compressed, high electron densities. In our paper, we construct a molecular test set with chemically relevant densities and analyze the performance of several density functional approximations including the less-investigated double hybrids. We apply an intensive error measure for the density, its gradient, and its Laplacian and examine how the errors in the density propagate into the semilocal exchange-correlation energy. While we have confirmed the broad conclusions of Medvedev et al., our different way of analyzing the data has led to conclusions that differ in detail. Finally, seeking for a rationale behind the global hybrid or double hybrid methods from the density's point of view, we also analyze the role of the exact exchange and second-order perturbative correlation mixing in PBE-based global hybrid and double hybrid functional forms.

Recently, we have constructed a dual-hybrid direct random phase approximation method, called dRPA75, and demonstrated its good performance on reaction energies, barrier heights, and noncovalent interactions of main-group elements. However, this method has also shown significant but quite systematic errors in the computed atomization energies. In this paper, we suggest a constrained spin-component scaling formalism for the dRPA75 method (SCS-dRPA75) in order to overcome the large error in the computed atomization energies, preserving the good performance of this method on spin-unpolarized systems at the same time. The SCS-dRPA75 method with the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set results in an average error lower than 1.5 kcal mol -1 for the entire n-homodesmotic hierarchy of hydrocarbon reactions (RC0-RC5 test sets). The overall performance of this method is better than the related direct random phase approximation-based double-hybrid PWRB95 method on open-shell systems of main-group elements (from the GMTKN30 database) and comparable to the best O(N 4 )-scaling opposite-spin second-order perturbation theory-based double-hybrid methods like PWPB95-D3 and to the O(N 5 )-scaling RPAX2@PBEx method, which also includes exchange interactions. Furthermore, it gives well-balanced performance on many types of barrier heights similarly to the best O(N 5 )-scaling second-order perturbation theory-based or spin-component scaled second-order perturbation theory-based double-hybrid methods such as XYG3 or DSD-PBEhB95. Finally, we show that the SCS-dRPA75 method has reduced self-interaction and delocalization errors compared to the parent dRPA75 method and a slightly smaller static correlation error than the related PWRB95 method.

In water clusters, there is a delicate balance of van der Waals interactions and hydrogen bonds. Although semilocal and nonlocal density functional approximations have been recently routinely applied to water in various phases, the accurate description of hydrogen bonds remains a challenge. The most popular density functional approaches fail to predict the correct ordering of the energies of water clusters. To illustrate the required accuracy, the CCSD(T) complete basis set extrapolated dissociation energy difference between the two lowest energy hexamer structures is 0.06 kcal mol(-1) per monomer. In this work, we assessed interaction energies in neutral and ionic water clusters with various density functionals with or without van der Waals correction. Generally, van der Waals approximations play a significant role in clusters with increasing size, while hybrid functionals improve the description of hydrogen bonds. Despite these general trends, none of the tested density functional approximations with or without van der Waals correction and exact exchange mixing can lead to a uniform performance for neutral and ionic water clusters. The recently constructed dual-hybrid dRPA75 approximation is a successful combination of exact and semilocal exchange, and nonlocal correlation in its energy, while utilizing a high fraction of exact exchange. We have shown that the dRPA75 method has a systematic error, which can be efficiently compensated for by the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set for small- and medium-sized water clusters.

The direct random phase approximation (dRPA) combined with Kohn-Sham reference orbitals is among the most promising tools in computational chemistry and applicable in many areas of chemistry and physics. The reason for this is that it scales as N(4) with the system size, which is a considerable advantage over the accurate ab initio wave function methods like standard coupled-cluster. dRPA also yields a considerably more accurate description of thermodynamic and electronic properties than standard density-functional theory methods. It is also able to describe strong static electron correlation effects even in large systems with a small or vanishing band gap missed by common single-reference methods. However, dRPA has several flaws due to its self-correlation error. In order to obtain accurate and precise reaction energies, barriers and noncovalent intra- and intermolecular interactions, we construct a new dual-hybrid dRPA (hybridization of exact and semilocal exchange in both the energy and the orbitals) and test the performance of this new functional on isogyric, isodesmic, hypohomodesmotic, homodesmotic, and hyperhomodesmotic reaction classes. We also use a test set of 14 Diels-Alder reactions, six atomization energies (AE6), 38 hydrocarbon atomization energies, and 100 reaction barrier heights (DBH24, HT-BH38, and NHT-BH38). For noncovalent complexes, we use the NCCE31 and S22 test sets. To test the intramolecular interactions, we use a set of alkane, cysteine, phenylalanine-glycine-glycine tripeptide, and monosaccharide conformers. We also discuss the delocalization and static correlation errors. We show that a universally accurate description of chemical properties can be provided by a large, 75% exact exchange mixing both in the calculation of the reference orbitals and the final energy.

The direct random phase approximation (dRPA) is a promising way to obtain improvements upon the standard semilocal density functional results in many aspects of computational chemistry. In this paper, we address the slow convergence of the calculated dRPA correlation energy with the increase of the quality and size of the popular Gaussian-type Dunning's correlation consistent aug-cc-pVXZ split valence atomic basis set family. The cardinal number X controls the size of the basis set, and we use X = 3-6 in this study. It is known that even the very expensive X = 6 basis sets lead to large errors for the dRPA correlation energy, and thus complete basis set extrapolation is necessary. We study the basis set convergence of the dRPA correlation energies on a set of 65 hydrocarbon isomers from CH4 to C6H6. We calculate the iterative density fitted dRPA correlation energies using an efficient algorithm based on the CC-like form of the equations using the self-consistent HF orbitals. We test the popular inverse cubic, the optimized exponential, and inverse power formulas for complete basis set extrapolation. We have found that the optimized inverse power based extrapolation delivers the best energies. Further analysis showed that the optimal exponent depends on the molecular structure, and the most efficient two-point energy extrapolations that use X = 3 and 4 can be improved considerably by considering the atomic composition and hybridization states of the atoms in the molecules. Our results also show that the optimized exponents that yield accurate X = 3 and 4 extrapolated dRPA energies for atoms or small molecules might be inaccurate for larger molecules.

We assess the performance of the semilocal PBE functional; its global hybrid variants; the highly parametrized empirical M06-2X and M08-SO; the range separated rCAM-B3LYP and MCY3; the atom-pairwise or nonlocal dispersion corrected semilocal PBE and TPSS; the dispersion corrected range-separated ωB97X-D; the dispersion corrected double hybrids such as PWPB95-D3; the direct random phase approximation, dRPA, with Hartree-Fock, Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof, and Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof hybrid reference orbitals and the RPAX2 method based on a Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof exchange reference orbitals for the Diels-Alder, DARC; and self-interaction error sensitive, SIE11, reaction energy test sets with large, augmented correlation consistent valence basis sets. The dRPA energies for the DARC test set are extrapolated to the complete basis set limit. CCSD(T)/CBS energies were used as a reference. The standard global hybrid functionals show general improvements over the typical endothermic energy error of semilocal functionals, but despite the increased accuracy the precision of the methods increases only slightly, and thus all reaction energies are simply shifted into the exothermic direction. Dispersion corrections give mixed results for the DARC test set. Vydrov-Van Voorhis 10 correction to the reaction energies gives superior quality results compared to the too-small D3 correction. Functionals parametrized for energies of noncovalent interactions like M08-SO give reasonable results without any dispersion correction. The dRPA method that seamlessly and theoretically correctly includes noncovalent interaction energies gives excellent results with properly chosen reference orbitals. As the results for the SIE11 test set and H2(+) dissociation show that the dRPA methods suffer from delocalization error, good reaction energies for the DARC test set from a given method do not prove that the method is free from delocalization error. The RPAX2 method shows good performance for the DARC, the SIE11 test sets, and for the H2(+) and H2 potential energy curves showing no one-electron self-interaction error and reduced static correlation errors at the same time. We also suggest simplified DARC6 and SIE9 test sets for future benchmarking.

A correct description of the anion-π interaction is essential for the design of selective anion receptors and channels and important for advances in the field of supramolecular chemistry. However, it is challenging to do accurate, precise, and efficient calculations of this interaction, which are lacking in the literature. In this article, by testing sets of 20 binary anion-π complexes of fluoride, chloride, bromide, nitrate, or carbonate ions with hexafluorobenzene, 1,3,5-trifluorobenzene, 2,4,6-trifluoro-1,3,5-triazine, or 1,3,5-triazine and 30 ternary π-anion-π' sandwich complexes composed from the same monomers, we suggest domain-based local-pair natural orbital coupled cluster energies extrapolated to the complete basis-set limit as reference values. We give a detailed explanation of the origin of anion-π interactions, using the permanent quadrupole moments, static dipole polarizabilities, and electrostatic potential maps. We use symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (SAPT) to calculate the components of the anion-π interaction energies. We examine the performance of the direct random phase approximation (dRPA), the second-order screened exchange (SOSEX), local-pair natural-orbital (LPNO) coupled electron pair approximation (CEPA), and several dispersion-corrected density functionals (including generalized gradient approximation (GGA), meta-GGA, and double hybrid density functional). The LPNO-CEPA/1 results show the best agreement with the reference results. The dRPA method is only slightly less accurate and precise than the LPNO-CEPA/1, but it is considerably more efficient (6-17 times faster) for the binary complexes studied in this paper. For 30 ternary π-anion-π' sandwich complexes, we give dRPA interaction energies as reference values. The double hybrid functionals are much more efficient but less accurate and precise than dRPA. The dispersion-corrected double hybrid PWPB95-D3(BJ) and B2PLYP-D3(BJ) functionals perform better than the GGA and meta-GGA functionals for the present test set.

Electrolyte Cathode Discharge (ELCAD) spectrometry, a novel sensitive multielement direct analytical method for metal traces in aqueous solutions, was introduced in 1993 as a new sensing principle. Since then several works have tried to develop an operational mechanism for this exotic atmospheric glow plasma technique, however these attempts cannot be combined into a valid model description. In this review we summarize the conceptual and technical problems we found in this upcoming research field of direct sensors. The T(G) gas temperature and the n(e) electron density values published up to now for ELCAD are very confusing. These data were evaluated by three conditions. The first is the gas composition of the ELCAD plasma, since T(G) was determined from the emitted intensity of the N(2) and OH bands. Secondly, since the ELCAD is an atmospheric glow discharge, thus, the obtained T(G) has to be close to the T(e) electron temperature. This can be used for the mutual validation of the received temperature data. Thirdly, as a consequence of the second condition, the values of T(G) and n(e) have to agree with the Engel-Brown approximation of the Saha-equation related to weakly ionized glow discharge plasmas. Application of non-adequate experimental methods and theoretical treatment leads to unreliable descriptions which cannot be used to optimize the detector performance.

A multi-element graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS) method was elaborated for the simultaneous determination of As, Cd, Cu, and Pb in wine samples of various sugar contents using the transversally heated graphite atomizer (THGA) with end-capped tubes and integrated graphite platforms (IGPs). For comparative GFAAS analyses, direct injection (i.e., dispensing the sample onto the IGP) and digestion-based (i.e., adding oxidizing agents, such as HNO(3) and/or H(2)O(2) to the sample solutions) methods were optimized with the application of chemical modifiers. The mixture of 5 microg Pd (applied as nitrate) plus 3 microg Mg(NO(3))(2) chemical modifier was proven to be optimal for the present set of analytes and matrix, it allowing the optimal 600 degrees C pyrolysis and 2200 degrees C atomization temperatures, respectively. The IGP of the THGA was pre-heated at 70 degrees C to prevent the sputtering and/or foaming of sample solutions with a high organic content, dispensed together with the modifier solution, which method also improved the reproducibility of the determinations. With the digestion-based method, the recovery ranged between 87 and 122%, while with the direct injection method it was between 96 and 102% for Cd, Cu, and Pb, whereas a lower, compromise recovery of 45-85% was realized for As. The detection limits (LODs) were found to be 5.0, 0.03, 1.2, and 0.8 microg l(-1) for As, Cd, Cu, and Pb, respectively. The characteristic mass (m(0)) data were 24 pg As, 1.3 pg Cd, 13 pg Cu, and 35 pg Pb. The upper limits of the linear calibration range were 100, 2, 100, and 200 microg l(-1) for As, Cd, Cu, and Pb, respectively. The precisions were not worse than 4.8, 3.1, 3.7, and 2.3% for As, Cd, Cu, and Pb, respectively. For arsenic, a higher amount of the modifier (e.g., 20 microg Pd plus 12 microg Mg(NO(3))(2)) could be recommended to overcome the interference from the presence of sulphate and phosphate in wines. Although this method increased the sensitivity for As (m(0)=20 pg), it also enhanced the background noise, thus only a slight improvement in the LOD of As (3.9 microg l(-1)) was realized. For the 35 red and white wine samples studied, the highest metal contents were observed for Cu ranging from 20 to 640 microg l(-1) (average: 148 microg l(-1)), followed by Pb from 6 to 90 microg l(-1) (average: 32.3 microg l(-1)), and Cd from 0.05 to 16.5 microg l(-1) (average: 1.06 microg l(-1)), whereas the As content was below the LOD. This wide fluctuation in the trace metal content could be associated with the origin of wines from various regions (i.e., different trace metal level and/or quality of soil, and/or anthropogenic impact), and with diverse materials (e.g., additives and containers) involved in the wine production processes. The Cu content of wine samples was significantly correlated with Pb, whereas its weak anti-correlation was found with Cd. Interestingly, the level of Pb was anti-correlated with the year of production of the wines. This is likely due to the gradual decrease in the Pb content of soils of vineyards by time, which certainly causes less Pb-uptake of the grape plant, thus a decrease in the Pb content of wines as well.