System-dependent dispersion coefficients for the DFT-D3 treatment of adsorption processes on ionic surfaces

Dispersion-corrected density functional theory calculations (DFT-D3) were performed for the adsorption of CO on MgO and C(2) H(2) on NaCl surfaces. An extension of our non-empirical scheme for the computation of atom-in-molecules dispersion coefficients is proposed. It is based on electrostatically embedded M(4)X(4) (M=Na, Mg) clusters that are used in TDDFT calculations of dynamic dipole polarizabilities. We find that the C(MM)(6) dispersion coefficients for bulk NaCl and MgO are reduced by factors of about 100 and 35 for Na and Mg, respectively, compared to the values of the free atoms. These are used in periodic DFT calculations with the revPBE semi-local density functional. As demonstrated by calculations of adsorption potential energy curves, the new C(6) coefficients lead to much more accurate energies (E(ads)) and molecule-surface distances than with previous DFT-D schemes. For NaCl/C(2) H(2) we obtained at the revPBE-D3(BJ) level a value of E(ads) =-7.4 kcal mol(-1) in good agreement with experimental data (-5.7 to -7.1 kcal mol(-1)). Dispersion-uncorrected DFT yields an unbound surface state. For the MgO/CO system, the computed revPBE-D3(BJ) value of E(ads) =-4.1 kcal mol(-1) is also in reasonable agreement with experimental results (-3.0 kcal mol(-1)) when thermal corrections are taken into account. Our new dispersion correction also improves computed lattice constants of the bulk systems significantly compared to plain DFT or previous DFT-D results. The extended DFT-D3 scheme also provides accurate non-covalent interactions for ionic systems without empirical adjustments and is suggested as a general tool in surface science.