Ab initio molecular dynamics study of supercritical carbon dioxide including dispersion corrections

Abstract

Density functional theory based ab initio molecular dynamics simulations with explicit inclusion of empirical van der Waals (vdW) corrections of supercritical carbon dioxide have been performed. Significant changes in the intermolecular pair correlation functions of the fluid modeled with the added vdW interactions are observed, particularly at lower densities. The closest neighbor to a molecule is seen to be oriented in a distorted T-shaped geometry, consistent with earlier experiments and simulations.