Impact of the damping function in dispersion-corrected density functional theory on the properties of liquid water

Accounting for dispersion interactions is essential in approximate density functional theory (DFT). Often, a correction potential based on the London formula is added, which is damped at short distances to avoid divergence and double-counting of interactions treated locally by the exchange-correlation functional. Most commonly, two forms of damping, known as zero- and Becke-Johnson (BJ)-damping, are employed, and it is generally assumed that the choice has only a minor impact on performance even though the resulting correction potentials differ quite dramatically. Recent studies have cast doubt on this assumption, pointing to a significant effect of damping for liquid water, but the underlying reasons have not yet been investigated. Here, we analyze this effect in detail for the widely used Tkatchenko-Scheffler and DFT-D3 dispersion models. We demonstrate that, regardless of the dispersion model, both types of damping perform equally well for interaction energies of water clusters, but find that for the two investigated functionals, zero-damping outperforms BJ-damping in dynamic simulations of liquid water. Compared to BJ-damping, zero-damping provides, for example, an improved structural description, self-diffusion, and density of liquid water. This can be explained by the repulsive gradient at small distances resulting from damping to zero that artificially destabilizes water's tetrahedral hydrogen-bonding network. Therefore, zero-damping can compensate for deficiencies often observed for generalized gradient functionals, which is not possible for strictly attractive BJ-damping. Consequently, the improvement that can be achieved by applying a dispersion correction strongly depends on the employed damping function, suggesting that the role of damping in dispersion-corrected DFT needs to be generally reevaluated.