Dissociation Energies via Embedding Techniques

Due to the large number of interactions, evaluating interaction energies for large or periodic systems results in time-consuming calculations. Prime examples are liquids, adsorbates, and molecular crystals. Thus, there is a high demand for a cheap but still accurate method to determine interaction energies and gradients. One approach to counteract the computational cost is to fragment a large cluster into smaller subsystems, sometimes called many-body expansion, with the fragments being molecules or parts thereof. These subsystems can then be embedded into larger entities, representing the bigger system. In this work, we test several subsystem approaches and explore their limits and behaviors, determined by calculations of trimer interaction energies. The methods presented here encompass mechanical embedding, point charges, polarizable embedding, polarizable density embedding, and density embedding. We evaluate nonembedded fragmentation, QM/MM (quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics), and QM/QM (quantum mechanics/quantum mechanics) embedding theories. Finally, we make use of symmetry-adapted perturbation theory utilizing density functional theory for the monomers to interpret the results. Depending on the strength of the interaction, different embedding methods and schemes prove favorable to accurately describe a system. The embedding approaches presented here are able to decrease the interaction energy errors with respect to full system calculations by a factor of up to 20 in comparison to simple/unembedded approaches, leading to errors below 0.1 kJ/mol.