Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2011
A model for studying carbon-hydrogen systems with molecular dynamics (MD) is developed based on an empirical tight-binding approach for the calculation of the interatomic forces. The parameters involved are obtained by fitting to the structure of methane. The transferability of the model is tested by reproducing accurately several electronic, structural, and vibrational properties of hydrocarbon molecules. Ab initio results on carbon clusters with hydrogen are compared with the results obtained with our model.