title: Evaluation of basis sets with 11-electron analytic effective core potentials of gold for modeling molecular electronic devices.
abstract: Three types of 11-electron analytic effective core potentials (ECPs) and their corresponding double-zeta and single-zeta basis sets of gold are evaluated using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We find that, compared with basis sets derived for use with Hatree-Fock-based Los Alamos (LANL1) and Ermler-Christiansen (EC) ECPs, the DFT-derived Troullier-Martins (TM) ECP together with a single-zeta basis set (TMSZ) is more suitable to describe not only the interaction between gold atoms with a benzene-1,4-dithiolate molecule but also the electronic structure of an infinite 1-dimensional monatomic gold chain. Hence, TMSZ is the best single-zeta basis set with an 11-electron ECP for gold available currently to be used in theoretical calculations on electrical properties of molecular electronic devices with DFT based Green's function method employing a finite analytic basis of local orbitals.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, Department of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. smhou@pku.edu.cn
authors.forename: Shimin
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authors.lastname: Hou
authors.forename: Rui
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authors.forename: Zekan
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authors.lastname: Qian
authors.forename: Jiaxing
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authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Ziyong
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authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Xingyu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Zenquan
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authors.lastname: Xue