This tutorial explains how to perform the convergence study with respect to the number of k-points and smearing width, and how to analyze the electronic structure, i.e., band structure and density of states.
Metallic systems have the Fermi surface, and to handle it, STATE uses the smearing technique with various smearing functions and the tetrahedron method. Furthermore, the number of k-points to sample the Brillouin zone can be critical for the accurate calculation of the metallic systems.
Here we present the convergence of the total energy with respect to the number of k-points with the Methefeesel-Paxton smearing (default) and tetrahedron methods. Use negative WIDTH (e.g. -0.02) to activate the Methefessel-Paxton smearing (with positive value, a parabolic function is used to treat the Fermi level and the entropic term is not taken into account).
0 0 0 0 0 0 : I_CTRL(1:6) (DUMMY) 4.00 8.00 1 1 1 : GMAX GMAXP NTYP NATM NATM2 221 2 : NUM_SPACE_GROUP TYPE 7.5967 7.5967 7.5967 90.0 90.0 90.0 : A B C ALPHA BETA GAMMA 06 06 06 1 1 1 : N1 N2 N3 M1 M2 M3 0 0 : NCORD, NINV 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 1 : CPS(1,1:3) IWEI IMDTYP ITYP 13 0.50 26.98 6 1 0.2 : IATOMN ALFA AMION ILOC IVAN 0 0 0 0 0 : ICOND INIPOS INIVEL ININOS INIACC 0 1 : IPRE IPRI 30 30 0 84200.00 0 : NMD1 NMD2 LAST_ITER CPUMAX IFSTOP 6 1 : WAY_MIX MIX_WHAT 0 20 0.60 : ITER_START KBXMIX MIX_ALPHA 0.20 0.30 0.20 0.20 0.20 : DTIM1 DTIM2 DTIM3 DTIM4 DTIM 300.00 4 1 0.50D-09 : DTIO IMDALG IEXPL EDELTA -0.0020 0.50D+03 0 : WIDTH FORCCR ISTRESS ggapbe 1 : XCTYPE KSPIN 2.00 : DESTM 101 : NBZTYPE 4 4 4 : NKX NKY NKZ (DUMMY) 4 4 4 : NKX2 NKY2 NKZ2 (DUMMY) 6 : KEG 1 : NEXTST 0 : (DUMMY) 2 : IMSD 0 : EVALUATE_EKO_DIFF 0 : NPDOSAO 0 0.000 : SM_N DOPPING (DUMMY)
0 0 0 0 0 0 : I_CTRL(1:6) (DUMMY) 4.00 8.00 1 1 1 : GMAX GMAXP NTYP NATM NATM2 221 2 : NUM_SPACE_GROUP TYPE 7.5967 7.5967 7.5967 90.0 90.0 90.0 : A B C ALPHA BETA GAMMA 06 06 06 1 1 1 : N1 N2 N3 M1 M2 M3 0 0 : NCORD, NINV 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 1 : CPS(1,1:3) IWEI IMDTYP ITYP 13 0.50 26.98 6 1 0.2 : IATOMN ALFA AMION ILOC IVAN 0 0 0 0 0 : ICOND INIPOS INIVEL ININOS INIACC 0 1 : IPRE IPRI 30 30 0 84200.00 0 : NMD1 NMD2 LAST_ITER CPUMAX IFSTOP 6 1 : WAY_MIX MIX_WHAT 0 20 0.60 : ITER_START KBXMIX MIX_ALPHA 0.20 0.30 0.20 0.20 0.20 : DTIM1 DTIM2 DTIM3 DTIM4 DTIM 300.00 4 1 0.50D-09 : DTIO IMDALG IEXPL EDELTA -10.02 0 0.50D+03 0 : WIDTH FORCCR ISTRESS ggapbe 1 : XCTYPE KSPIN 2.00 : DESTM 101 : NBZTYPE 4 4 4 : NKX NKY NKZ (DUMMY) 4 4 4 : NKX2 NKY2 NKZ2 (DUMMY) 6 : KEG 1 : NEXTST 0 : (DUMMY) 2 : IMSD 0 : EVALUATE_EKO_DIFF 0 : NPDOSAO 0 0.000 : SM_N DOPPING (DUMMY)See the difference in WIDTH.
Total (free) energy of the metallic system is sensitive to the smearing width, in particular, with the Gaussian and Fermi-Dirac function. Here we demonstrate the smearing width dependence of the total energy, following the seminal work by de Gironcoli [Phys. Rev. B51, 6773(R) (1995)]. Smearing function can be chosen by adding the section &OTHERS ... &END at the end of the input file. To use the Fermi-Dirac distribution function set
&OTHERS FERMI_DIRAC &END
For the Gaussian smearing
&OTHERS GAUSSIAN &END
The cold smearing of Marzari and Vanderbilt is also avilable. Use
&OTHERS COLD &END
Let us dicuss how to perform the band structure analysis. First of all, we need to get electron density and perform a self-consistent-field (SCF) calculation. Below is an example of the input file for the SCF calculation with relatively coarse k-point grid.
0 0 0 0 0 0 : I_CTRL(1:6) (DUMMY) 4.00 8.00 1 1 1 : GMAX GMAXP NTYP NATM NATM2 221 2 : NUM_SPACE_GROUP TYPE 7.5967 7.5967 7.5967 90.0 90.0 90.0 : A B C ALPHA BETA GAMMA 06 06 06 1 1 1 : N1 N2 N3 M1 M2 M3 0 0 : NCORD, NINV 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 1 : CPS(1,1:3) IWEI IMDTYP ITYP 13 0.50 26.98 6 1 0.2 : IATOMN ALFA AMION ILOC IVAN 0 0 0 0 0 : ICOND INIPOS INIVEL ININOS INIACC 0 1 : IPRE IPRI 30 30 0 84200.00 0 : NMD1 NMD2 LAST_ITER CPUMAX IFSTOP 6 1 : WAY_MIX MIX_WHAT 0 20 0.60 : ITER_START KBXMIX MIX_ALPHA 0.20 0.30 0.20 0.20 0.20 : DTIM1 DTIM2 DTIM3 DTIM4 DTIM 300.00 4 1 0.50D-09 : DTIO IMDALG IEXPL EDELTA -0.0020 0.50D+03 0 : WIDTH FORCCR ISTRESS ggapbe 1 : XCTYPE KSPIN 2.00 : DESTM 101 : NBZTYPE 4 4 4 : NKX NKY NKZ (DUMMY) 4 4 4 : NKX2 NKY2 NKZ2 (DUMMY) 6 : KEG 1 : NEXTST 0 : (DUMMY) 2 : IMSD 0 : EVALUATE_EKO_DIFF 0 : NPDOSAO 0 0.000 : SM_N DOPPING (DUMMY)Then we perform a non-self-consisnten-filed (non-SCF) calculation using the converged electron density. Specifically we solve the Kohn-Sham equation along the high symmetry lines in the Brillouin zone. Below is an example for the non-SCF band structure calculation.
0 0 0 0 0 0 : I_CTRL(1:6) (DUMMY) 4.00 8.00 1 1 1 : GMAX GMAXP NTYP NATM NATM2 221 2 : NUM_SPACE_GROUP TYPE 7.5967 7.5967 7.5967 90.0 90.0 90.0 : A B C ALPHA BETA GAMMA 06 06 06 1 1 1 : N1 N2 N3 M1 M2 M3 0 0 : NCORD, NINV 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0 1 : CPS(1,1:3) IWEI IMDTYP ITYP 13 0.50 26.98 6 1 0.2 : IATOMN ALFA AMION ILOC IVAN 22 0 0 0 0 : ICOND INIPOS INIVEL ININOS INIACC 0 1 : IPRE IPRI 30 30 0 84200.00 0 : NMD1 NMD2 LAST_ITER CPUMAX IFSTOP 6 1 : WAY_MIX MIX_WHAT 0 20 0.60 : ITER_START KBXMIX MIX_ALPHA 0.20 0.30 0.20 0.20 0.20 : DTIM1 DTIM2 DTIM3 DTIM4 DTIM 300.00 4 1 0.50D-09 : DTIO IMDALG IEXPL EDELTA -0.0020 0.50D+03 0 : WIDTH FORCCR ISTRESS ggapbe 1 : XCTYPE KSPIN 2.00 : DESTM 101 : NBZTYPE 4 4 4 : NKX NKY NKZ (DUMMY) 4 4 4 : NKX2 NKY2 NKZ2 (DUMMY) 6 : KEG 1 : NEXTST 0 : (DUMMY) 2 : IMSD 0 : EVALUATE_EKO_DIFF 0 : NPDOSAO 0 0.000 : SM_N DOPPING (DUMMY) &KPOINTS_BAND NKSEG 4 KMESH 40 20 20 20 KPOINTS 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.500 0.500 0.250 0.500 0.750 0.500 0.500 0.500 0.000 0.000 0.000 &ENDTo perform the band structure, ICOND must be set to 22 as
22 0 0 0 0 : ICOND INIPOS INIVEL ININOS INIACCIn addition, the (high-symmetry) k-points, which define the symmetry, should be given in the &KPOINTS_BAND ... &END block.
&KPOINTS_BAND NKSEG 4 KMESH 40 20 20 20 KPOINTS 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.500 0.500 0.250 0.500 0.750 0.500 0.500 0.500 0.000 0.000 0.000 &ENDHere
NKSEGis the number of k-point segments. The k-point mesh for each segment follows
KMESHand k-points in the reduced coordinate are given below
KPOINTSThe number of k-points should be NKSEG+1.
> energy2bandand provide the number of bands in the calculation, the number of bands to be plotted, the number of total k-points in the non-SCF band structure calculation, and the Fermi level in Hartree, as prompted, "band.data" is created. The "band.data" can be used to plot the band structure by using for e.g., gnuplot and xmgrace.