Getting started with BAND

BAND is an atomic-orbital based DFT program for periodic systems (crystals, slabs, chains and molecules).

This introductory tutorial will show you how to:

• Set up and run a BAND calculation (using ADFJobs and ADFInput)
• Visualize the band structure and density of states using BandStructure
• Visualize densities and atomic charges with ADFView

If you are not at all familiar with our Graphical User Interface (GUI), check out the Introductory tutorial first.

Create a work directory and start up ADFInput

Let us begin by creating a new work directory for our tutorial using ADFjobs:

Start ADFjobs

Select File → New Directory

Rename the new directory by typing, for example, ‘BandTutorial’ and hitting Return

Move into that directory by clicking on the corresponding folder icon

Now we can start ADFInput from the SCM menu:

Click on SCM → New Input

In ADFInput switch the program from ADF (our molecular DFT program) to BAND:

Switch from ADF to BAND

Set up the NaCl crystal calculation

We now want to create a sodium chloride crystal. Let us import the geometry from our database of structures:

1. search for NaCl in the search box (magnifying glass)

2. select Crystals → NaCl

3. click on View → Periodic → Repeat Unit Cells

There are other ways of defining the geometry of your system:

• You could draw your system in the molecule editing area, as described in the tutorial Building Crystals and Slabs.
• You could import the geometry from a file: File → Import Coordinates... (Download NaCl.xyz). Supported formats: .xyz, .cif and .pdb.

We will now set up the calculation details in the Main Panel: in this tutorial we will perform a single point calculation with the PBE XC functional, and we will compute the Band Structure and Density Of States (DOS).

1. On the Main panel, click on the XC functional drop-down menu and select GGA → PBE

2. Tick the DOS and Band structure check boxes

Run the calculation

First we need to save our job:

Click on File → Save

and then we can run the calculation:

Click on File → Run

This will open ADFjobs and start the calculation

On the right of each job there is an icon indicating the status:

	Idle	the job is ready to be executed
	Running	the job is running
	Completed	the job is ready
	Error	the job terminated with some error
	Warning	the job terminated with some warning
	Queued	the job is queued for execution
	Stopped	the job has been killed by the user

You can monitor the progress of your calculation by opening the log file:

Select your job in ADFJobs

click on SCM → logfile

Once the calculation is finished, we can visualize the results.

Examine the band structure and DOS

With the BandStructure program we can inspect the band structure and density of states. To open BandStructure:

Select the job in ADFJobs

click on SCM → Band Structure

Visualize results with ADFView

Three-dimensional fields can be visualized with ADFView

Select your job in ADFJobs

click on SCM → View

See also

3D field visualization with BAND

Let’s visualize the deformation density (i.e. the difference between the electronic density in the crystal and the electronic density of the spherical spin-restricted isolated atoms) on a cut plane:

Click on Add → Cut Plane: Colored

Click on Select Field → Density → Deformation Density

Tweak the various parameters, as showed in the following picture

Tip

If you hover with the mouse cursor over the min and max fields values, you can see the actual minimum and maximum values of the field.

To hide the atoms:

Click on View → Molecule → Hidden

To increase the resolution of our cut-plane plot:

Click on Fields → Grid → Medium

This concludes the Getting Started tutorial.