Computational chemistry

This article is a draft

This is not a complete article: This is a draft, a work in progress that is intended to be published into an article, which may or may not be ready for inclusion in the main wiki. It should not necessarily be considered factual or authoritative.

Computational chemistry is a branch of chemistry that incorporates the results of theoretical chemistry into computer programs to calculate the structures and properties of molecules and solids.

Computational chemistry methods range from highly accurate to very approximate. Ab initio methods, based entirely on first principles, tend to be broadly applicable but very costly. Semi-empirical methods give accurate results for a narrower range of cases, but are also typically much faster than ab initio methods. Density functional methods may be thought of as a compromise in cost between ab initio and semi-empirical methods. Molecular mechanics methods, based on classical mechanics instead of quantum mechanics, are yet faster but yet more narrowly applicable.

Molecular mechanics methods are nevertheless extremely useful in the study of biological systems. Please see the Biomolecular simulation page for a discussion of the resources relevant to this area of research. The remainder of this page is intended as a survey of the resources available for high-accuracy computational chemistry, but bear in mind that the distinction is artificial and many tools are applicable to both biological and non-biological systems.

Notes on installed software

TO DO: Reorganize this list thematically, e.g. separate applications from libraries. Add annotations about intended purposes.

• Abinit
• CheMPS2
• CP2K
• CPMD
• deMon
• GAMESS-US
• Gaussian, available only at Graham
• OpenKIM
• Libxc, a code library for development of density-functional models.
• Molden, a visualization tool for use in conjunction with GAMESS, Gaussian, & others.
• NWChem
• Open3DQSAR
• OpenBabel, a tool for converting between file formats for chemical data.
• ORCA
• PCMSolver, a tool for code development related to the Polarizable Continuum Model. Some packages offer built-in capabilities related to the PCM.
• PSI4
• Quantum ESPRESSO
• SIESTA
• Spglib, a library for code development relating to symmetries of crystals.
• VASP

For an automatically-generated list of versions installed on Compute Canada systems, see Available software. For an annotated list of software supported by the Biomolecular Simulation National Team, see Biomolecular simulation.