The effects of dispersion damping and three-body interactions for accurate layered-material exfoliation energies

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Rumson, Adrian F., Bryenton, Kyle R., Johnson, Erin R.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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_version_ 1866918515508772864
author Rumson, Adrian F.
Bryenton, Kyle R.
Johnson, Erin R.
author_facet Rumson, Adrian F.
Bryenton, Kyle R.
Johnson, Erin R.
contents Accurate predictions of exfoliation energies and lattice constants of layered materials hinge on a correct description of London dispersion physics. Modern a posteriori dispersion corrections in density-functional theory (DFT), such as the exchange-hole dipole moment (XDM) model, capture the proper asymptotic behaviour at long range while making use of damping functions to prevent unphysical divergence at short range. In the united-atom limit, the dispersion energy is damped to a finite, non-zero value by both the canonical Becke--Johnson (BJ) damping function and the new Z-damping function. XDM(BJ) has previously demonstrated exceptional accuracy for modelling layered materials, such as in the LM26 benchmark, which includes graphite, hexagonal boron nitride, lead(II) oxide, and transition-metal dichalcogenides. This work presents the first assessment of XDM(Z) on the same benchmark. We also show that inclusion of three-body interactions via the Axilrod--Teller--Muto (ATM) term further improves the computed exfoliation energies for both XDM(BJ) and XDM(Z), yielding the best performance achieved on LM26 using semi-local functionals to date, relative to reference data from the random-phase approximation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_06539
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The effects of dispersion damping and three-body interactions for accurate layered-material exfoliation energies
Rumson, Adrian F.
Bryenton, Kyle R.
Johnson, Erin R.
Materials Science
Chemical Physics
Accurate predictions of exfoliation energies and lattice constants of layered materials hinge on a correct description of London dispersion physics. Modern a posteriori dispersion corrections in density-functional theory (DFT), such as the exchange-hole dipole moment (XDM) model, capture the proper asymptotic behaviour at long range while making use of damping functions to prevent unphysical divergence at short range. In the united-atom limit, the dispersion energy is damped to a finite, non-zero value by both the canonical Becke--Johnson (BJ) damping function and the new Z-damping function. XDM(BJ) has previously demonstrated exceptional accuracy for modelling layered materials, such as in the LM26 benchmark, which includes graphite, hexagonal boron nitride, lead(II) oxide, and transition-metal dichalcogenides. This work presents the first assessment of XDM(Z) on the same benchmark. We also show that inclusion of three-body interactions via the Axilrod--Teller--Muto (ATM) term further improves the computed exfoliation energies for both XDM(BJ) and XDM(Z), yielding the best performance achieved on LM26 using semi-local functionals to date, relative to reference data from the random-phase approximation.
title The effects of dispersion damping and three-body interactions for accurate layered-material exfoliation energies
topic Materials Science
Chemical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.06539