Benchmark Investigation of SCC-DFTB Against Standard DFT to Model Phononic Properties in Two-Dimensional MOFs for Thermoelectric Applications.

Despite the importance of modeling lattice thermal conductivity in predicting thermoelectric (TE) properties, computational data on heat transport, especially from first-principles, in 2D metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) remain limited due to the high computational cost. To address this, we provide a benchmark of the performance of semiempirical self-consistent-charge density functional tight-binding (SCC-DFTB) methods against density functional theory (DFT) for monolayer, serrated, AA-stacked and/or AB-stacked ZnCO, CdCO, Zn-NH-MOF, and Ni(HITP) MOFs. Harmonic lattice dynamics calculations, including partial atomic contributions to phonon dispersions, are evaluated with both SCC-DFTB and DFT, whereas anharmonic transport (i.e., thermal conductivity) is evaluated with SCC-DFTB only. Our findings further suggest that unlike the other stacking geometries modeled, serrated ZnCO, serrated Zn-NH-MOF, and wavy serrated Ni(HITP) represent stable geometries. While ZnCO and Zn-NH-MOF exhibit a higher power factor than Ni(HITP) (as found in our previous work), Zn-NH-MOF shows lower thermal conductivity, resulting in the highest thermoelectric figure of merit () among the studied MOFs.