Plane-wave pseudopotential implementation and performance of SCAN meta-GGA exchange-correlation functional for extended systems

Abstract

We present the implementation and performance of the strongly constrained and appropriately normed, SCAN, meta-GGA exchange-correlation (XC) approximation in the planewave-pseudopotential (PW-PP) formalism using the Troullier-Martins pseudopotential scheme. We studied its performance by applying the PW-PP implementation to several practical applications of interest in condensed matter sciences: (a) crystalline silicon and germanium, (b) martensitic phase transition energetics of phosphorene, and (c) a single water molecule physisorption on a graphene sheet. Given the much-improved accuracy over the GGA functionals and its relatively low computational cost compared to hybrid XC functionals, the SCAN functional is highly promising for various practical applications of density functional theory calculations for condensed matter systems. At same time, the SCAN meta-GGA functional appears to require more careful attention to numerical details. The meta-GGA functional shows more significant dependence on the fast Fourier transform grid, which is used for evaluating the XC potential in real space in the PW-PP formalism, than other more conventional GGA functionals do. Additionally, using pseudopotentials that are generated at a different/lower level of XC approximation could introduce noticeable errors in calculating some properties such as phase transition energetics.