Lattice Structure and Dynamics of Sparse Molecular Crystals: OsO₄ and RuO₄

OsO4 and RuO4 are molecular oxides with unique tetrameric structures and rare +8 oxidation states. Accurately modeling their properties remains challenging for density functional theory (DFT) due to weak intertetramer interactions, which standard functionals fail to capture. Here, we show that the van der Waals (vdW)-corrected density functional (vdW-DF-optB86b) provides structural parameters that are much closer to experimental values than the standard generalized gradient approximation, with volume predictions that fall within the experimentally observed range. Phonon band structure analysis shows that the inclusion of vdW interactions stabilizes soft phonon modes, highlighting the importance of dispersion corrections for accurate predictions of lattice dynamics. Experimental measurements of the phonon density of states for OsO4, obtained via inelastic neutron scattering, demonstrate good agreement with our vdW-DF-optB86b calculations. These results validate OsO4 and RuO4 as valuable benchmarks for structural and vibrational calculations via vdW-corrected DFT methods and offer insights for studying the broader class of sparse molecular materials.