Wannier90 is an open-source computer program for calculating maximally-localised Wannier functions (MLWFs) from a set of Bloch states. It is interfaced to many widely used electronic-structure codes thanks to its independence from the basis sets representing these Bloch states. In the past few years the development of Wannier90 has transitioned to a community-driven model; this has resulted in a number of new developments that have been recently released in Wannier90 v3.0. In this article we describe these new functionalities, that include the implementation of new features for wannierisation and disentanglement (symmetry-adapted Wannier functions, selectively-localised Wannier functions, selected columns of the density matrix) and the ability to calculate new properties (shift currents and Berry-curvature dipole, and a new interface to many-body perturbation theory); performance improvements, including parallelisation of the core code; enhancements in functionality (support for spinor-valued Wannier functions, more accurate methods to interpolate quantities in the Brillouin zone); improved usability (improved plotting routines, integration with high-throughput automation frameworks), as well as the implementation of modern software engineering practices (unit testing, continuous integration, and automatic source-code documentation). These new features, capabilities, and code development model aim to further sustain and expand the community uptake and range of applicability, that nowadays spans complex and accurate dielectric, electronic, magnetic, optical, topological and transport properties of materials.

We propose modifications to the functional form of the Strongly Constrained and Appropriately Normed (SCAN) density functional to eliminate numerical instabilities. This is necessary to allow reliable, automatic generation of pseudopotentials (including projector augmented-wave potentials). The regularized SCAN is designed to match the original form very closely, and we show that its performance remains comparable.

Vibrational modes affect fundamental physical properties such as the conduction of sound and heat and can be sensitive to nano- and atomic-scale structure. Probing the momentum transfer dependence of vibrational modes provides a wealth of information about a materials system; however, experimental work has been limited to essentially bulk and averaged surface approaches or to small wave vectors. We demonstrate a combined experimental and theoretical methodology for nanoscale mapping of optical and acoustic phonons across the first Brillouin zone, in the electron microscope, probing a volume ~10¹⁰ to 10²⁰ times smaller than that of comparable bulk and surface techniques. In combination with more conventional electron microscopy techniques, the presented methodology should allow for direct correlation of nanoscale vibrational mode dispersions with atomic-scale structure and chemistry.

Maximally-localised Wannier functions (MLWFs) are routinely used to compute from first-principles advanced materials properties that require very dense Brillouin zone integration and to build accurate tight-binding models for scale-bridging simulations. At the same time, high-throughput (HT) computational materials design is an emergent field that promises to accelerate reliable and cost-effective design and optimisation of new materials with target properties. The use of MLWFs in HT workflows has been hampered by the fact that generating MLWFs automatically and robustly without any user intervention and for arbitrary materials is, in general, very challenging. We address this problem directly by proposing a procedure for automatically generating MLWFs for HT frameworks. Our approach is based on the selected columns of the density matrix method and we present the details of its implementation in an AiiDA workflow. We apply our approach to a dataset of 200 bulk crystalline materials that span a wide structural and chemical space. We assess the quality of our MLWFs in terms of the accuracy of the band-structure interpolation that they provide as compared to the band-structure obtained via full first-principles calculations. Finally, we provide a downloadable virtual machine that can be used to reproduce the results of this paper, including all first-principles and atomistic simulations as well as the computational workflows.

We introduce two open source tools to aid the processing and visualisation of ab-initio computed solid-state NMR parameters. The Magres file format for computed NMR parameters (as implemented in CASTEP v8.0 and QuantumEspresso v5.0.0) is implemented. MagresView is built upon the widely used Jmol crystal viewer, and provides an intuitive environment to display computed NMR parameters. It can provide simple pictorial representation of one- and two-dimensional NMR spectra as well as output a selected spin-system for exact simulations with dedicated spin-dynamics software. MagresPython provides a simple scripting environment to manipulate large numbers of computed NMR parameters to search for structural correlations.