Neural network approach to quantum-chemistry data: Accurate prediction of density functional theory energies

Abstract

Artificial neural network (ANN) approach has been applied to estimate the density functional theory (DFT) energy with large basis set using lower-level energy values and molecular descriptors. A total of 208 different molecules were used for the ANN training, cross validation, and testing by applying BLYP, B3LYP, and BMK density functionals. Hartree–Fock results were reported for comparison. Furthermore, constitutional molecular descriptor (CD) and quantum-chemical molecular descriptor (QD) were used for building the calibration model. The neural network structure optimization, leading to four to five hidden neurons, was also carried out. The usage of several low-level energy values was found to greatly reduce the prediction error. An expected error, mean absolute deviation, for ANN approximation to DFT energies was 0.6±0.2 kcal mol−1. In addition, the comparison of the different density functionals with the basis sets and the comparison of multiple linear regression results were also provided. The CDs were found to overcome limitation of the QD. Furthermore, the effective ANN model for DFT/6-311G(3df,3pd) and DFT/6-311G(2df,2pd) energy estimation was developed, and the benchmark results were provided.