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DFT-D4

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Revision as of 10:29, 2 February 2026 by Ftran (talk | contribs)

DFT-D4 is an external package maintained by the Grimme group that can be linked to VASP. Read the documentation for more information about this package. DFT-D4 adds van-der-Waals (vdW) interactions to DFT because they are not included in most exchange-correlation functionals. It approximates the vdW interactions considering only the structure of the system which allows for a fast computation. Since every functional has different interactions between atoms, DFT-D4 tailors its adjustable parameters to the functional.

For more information regarding these parameters, please refer to the DFT-D4 paper.[1]

Usage

In most cases, it is sufficient to set IVDW=13 in the INCAR file if VASP was compiled and linked to DFT-D4. Internally, VASP passes the name of the used exchange-correlation functional to DFT-D4. Subsequently, DFT-D4 maps this name of the functional to optimized settings for the adjustable parameters of the vdW interaction. VASP uses these parameters to compute the DFT-D4 energies, forces, and stresses in every ionic step and adds them to the corresponding DFT terms. As a result, you can relax structures or run MD simulations with an approximate treatment of vdW interactions.

VASP allows setting the following tags in the INCAR file to change the strength of the vdW interaction.

  • VDW_S6, VDW_S8 determine the strength of the dipole-dipole and dipole-quadrupole interaction.
  • VDW_A1, VDW_A2 are scaling constants in the Becke-Johnson damping.

References

  1. Template loop detected: Template:CiteTemplate loop detected: Template:CiteTemplate loop detected: Template:Cite E. Caldeweyher, J.-M. Mewes, S. Ehlert, and S. Grimme, Extension and evaluation of the D4 London-dispersion model for periodic systems, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 22, 8499 (2020).

Related tags and articles

IVDW, VDW_S6, VDW_S8, VDW_A1, VDW_A2, DFT-D3, Linking to DFT-D4