Available pseudopotentials
Pseudopotentials stored in POTCAR files are available for all elements in the periodic table from the VASP Portal. These are mostly Projector augmented wave (PAW) pseudopotentials. All distributed pseudopotentials have been generated by G. Kresse. The PAW potentials have been created following the recipes discussed in [1], whereas the PAW method has been first suggested and used by Peter Blöchl [2]. Therefore, if you use any of the supplied PAW potentials, you should include these two references.
Except for the 1st-row elements, all PAW potentials are designed to work reliably and accurately at an energy cutoff of roughly 250 eV. This is a key aspect of making the calculation computationally cheap. The default energy cutoff is set by the ENMAX tag in the POTCAR file.
Why VASP recommends PAW potentials
Generally, the PAW potentials are more accurate than ultra-soft pseudopotentials (US-PP). There are two reasons for this: First, the radial cutoffs (core radii) are smaller than the radii used for US-PP. Second, the PAW potentials reconstruct the exact valence wavefunction with all nodes in the core region. Since the core radii of the PAW potentials are smaller, the required energy cutoffs and basis sets are also larger. If such high precision is not required, the older US-PP can be used in principle, but it is discouraged. This is because the energy cutoffs have not changed appreciably for C, N, and O. Thus, the increase in the basis-set size will usually be small so that calculations for compounds that include any of these elements are not more expensive with PAW than with US-PP. We also list old US-PP potentials here, but those files are outdated, not supported and only distributed as is. Some VASP feature might yield undesired results with these files (e.g. metaGGA)
Lists of all pseudopotentials for calculations involving mainly occupied states
We list all pseudopotentials available from the VASP Portal that are mostly optimized for the treatment of occupied states, and unoccupied states close to the Fermi level. We advise to use the latest set of potentials, potpaw.64 unless there is a specific reason to use another set.
potpaw.64 (latest)
potpaw.54
potpaw.52
potpaw.54 (original univie release version)
potpaw.52 (original univie release version)
LDA (2010), PW91 (2006) and PBE (2010) PAW potentials
Ultrasoft pseudopotentials for LDA and PW91 (2002)
Ultrasoft pseudo potentials for LDA and PW91 (dated 2002-08-20 and 2002-04-08, respectively). These files are outdated, not supported and only distributed as is. Some VASP feature might yield undesired results with these files (e.g. metaGGA)
List of all pseudopotentials optimized for calculations involving unoccupied states
We list all pseudopotentials available from the VASP Portal that are optimized for the treatment of unoccupied states far above the Fermi level as well as occuoied states. Those are the pseudopotential with an _GW suffix. We advise to use the latest set of potentials, potpaw.64 unless there is a specific reason to use another set.