Structural, vibrational, and quasiparticle band structure of 1,1-diamino-2,2-dinitroethelene from ab initio calculations

The effects of pressure on the structural and vibrational properties of the layered molecular crystal 1,1-diamino-2,2-dinitroethelene (FOX-7) are explored by first principles calculations. We observe significant changes in the calculated structural properties with different corrections for treating van der Waals interactions to Density Functional Theory (DFT), as compared with standard DFT functionals. In particular, the calculated ground state lattice parameters, volume and bulk modulus obtained with Grimme's scheme, are found to agree well with experiments. The calculated vibrational frequencies demonstrate the dependence of the intra and inter-molecular interactions on FOX-7 under pressure. In addition, we also found a significant increment in the N-H center dot center dot center dot O hydrogen bond strength under compression. This is explained by the change in bond lengths between nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms, as well as calculated IR spectra under pressure. Finally, the computed band gap is about 2.3 eV with generalized gradient approximation, and is enhanced to 5.1 eV with the GW approximation, which reveals the importance of performing quasiparticle calculations in high energy density materials. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.