Inquiry about NEB and VASPSol Methods in VASP Installation

[Sherif_Yehia1]

Hello VASP Community,
I hope this message finds you well. I am relatively new to VASP and have some questions regarding specific models/methods like NEB and VASPSol, which are required for my current project.
1. Familiarity and Usage: Are the NEB (Nudged Elastic Band) and VASPSol methods familiar to you? Do you use them frequently? Are they commonly used by VASP users?
2. Inclusion in VASP Installation: For a VASP installation to include these methods, do they need to be specifically included during the compilation process, or can they be added to the code at a later stage?
Any insights or guidance on these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!
Best regards,
Sherif Yehia

[michael_wolloch]

Dear Sherif Yehia,

I moved this topic to the "From users for users" section of our forum, since it is more of a question for the user community than an installation issue.

But allow me to get the discussion going with a few points:

• The nuged elastic band (NEB) method is implemented in VASP, and can be used out of the box. Please also consult our wiki page about practical considerations when looking for transition states, if you are not very familiar with the process.

• VTST tools is a more powerful external package for advanced NEB methods that can be installed and linked to VASP. Installation requires some modification to the VASP source files and the makefile.include. Thus, VASP must be recompiled to use this tool. VASP does not maintain this package, and we do not provide support for it directly.

• VaspSol is also an external package and requires patching the source code of VASP. So the codes need to be recompiled if you want to use it. Again, we do not provide support for VaspSol.

I hope the community will partake in this discussion and that my contribution helps to clear up some open issues for you.
cheers, Michael