All-electron method
All-electron method refers to electronic structure methods that consider all electrons in the system explicitly in solving for the wave functions (or electron densities). This is in contrast to the pseudopotential method where the influence of inner-shell electrons is taken into account through an effective potential (i.e., pseudopotential). All-electron methods are, in general, more accurate than pseudopotential methods. An additional merit is that all-electron methods are more suited for simulation of X-ray spectroscopy which involve inner-shell electrons. On the other hand, the calculation cost is higher than the pseudopotential method due to the larger number of electrons under consideration. Software codes employ various measures for efficiently handling steep variations in the inner-shell orbitals and gradual changes in interstitial regions at the same time.