Application of the SCC-DFTB method to neutral and protonated water clusters and bulk water

The self-consistent charge density functional tight-binding (SCC-DFTB) method has been actively employed to study proton-transfer processes in biological systems. Recent studies in the literature employing SCC-DFTB reported that the method favors the Zundel form of the hydrated proton over the Eigen form, both in gas-phase water clusters and in bulk water, in disagreement with both higher-level calculations and experimental data. In this work, we explore the performance of SCC-DFTB for protonated gas-phase water clusters and bulk water (the latter both with and without an excess proton) with a modified O-H repulsive potential reported in our earlier work and with on-site third-order expansion of the DFT energy. Our results show that, with the proper set of published parameters, SCC-DFTB does correctly favor the Eigen form of the hydrated proton as compared to the Zundel form, both in gas-phase clusters and in the bulk; the amphiphilic character of the hydrated proton discussed in the literature has also been observed. The analyses do, however, bring forth remaining limitations in terms of the solvation structure around the hydrated proton as well as the structure of bulk water, which can guide future improvements of the method.