DFTB+ is a fast quantum mechanical atomistic simulation package based on the Density Functional Tight Binding method.
It’s designed for approximate electronic-structure calculations on molecules, clusters, and periodic materials, and can be used either as a standalone application or embedded into other software as a library.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Supports DFTB and xTB Hamiltonians for clusters and periodic systems, including arbitrary k-point sampling.
- Offers geometry and lattice optimisation, vibrational frequency analysis, and molecular dynamics with NVE, NPH, NVT, and NPT ensembles.
- Includes advanced methods such as spin-polarised calculations, spin-orbit coupling, excited-state calculations, and non-adiabatic coupling vectors.
- Provides electron and phonon transport capabilities, including non-equilibrium Green’s function based transport calculations.
- Supports several implicit solvation models, external electric fields, and QM/MM coupling via fields.
- Uses MPI and OpenMP parallelisation, with GPU support available for selected diagonalisation routines.
- Includes an extensible HSD input format and the Waveplot tool for generating cube files for charge distributions and molecular orbitals.
Website: github.com/dftbplus/dftbplus
Support:
Developer: DFTB+ developers group
License: GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 or later
DFTB+ is written in Fortran. Learn Fortran with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Chemistry Tools | |
|---|---|
| GROMACS | Versatile package to perform molecular dynamics |
| tomviz | Process, visualize, and analyze 3D tomographic data |
| Psi4 | Ab initio quantum chemistry software |
| NWChem | Ab initio computational chemistry software package |
| PyMOL | OpenGL molecular graphics system written in Python |
| LAMMPS | Classical molecular dynamics simulator |
| CP2K | Atomistic simulations of solid state, liquid, molecular and biological systems |
| GAMESS | General ab initio quantum chemistry package |
| Avogadro | Advanced molecular editor |
| OpenMM | High-performance toolkit for molecular simulation |
| Gabedit | Graphical user interface to computational chemistry packages |
| Open Babel | Converts and manipulates chemical data files |
| Jmol | Viewer for three-dimensional chemical structures |
| Kalzium | Full-featured chemistry application for KDE 5 |
| XDrawChem | 2D editor for chemical structures and reactions |
| Cantera | Chemical kinetics, thermodynamics, and transport tool suite |
| Orac | OpenMP/MPI molecular dynamics engine to simulate solvated biomolecules |
| MPQC | Computes the properties of molecules, ab initio |
| JChemPaint | Chemical 2D structure editor |
| BKChem | 2D molecule editor written in Python |
| MDynaMix | General purpose molecular dynamics |
| ChemCanvas | 2D chemical drawing tool |
| MoleQueue | Abstract, manage, and coordinate the execution of tasks |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

