Computational tests of quantum chemical models for excited and ionized states of molecules with phosphorus and sulfur atoms.

Abstract

Time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) and electron propagator theory (EPT) are used to calculate the electronic transition energies and ionization energies, respectively, of species containing phosphorus or sulfur. The accuracy of TD-DFT and EPT, in conjunction with various basis sets, is assessed with data from gas-phase spectroscopy. TD-DFT is tested using 11 prominent exchange-correlation functionals on a set of 37 vertical and 19 adiabatic transitions. For vertical transitions, TD-CAM-B3LYP calculations performed with the MG3S basis set are lowest in overall error, having a mean absolute deviation from experiment of 0.22 eV, or 0.23 eV over valence transitions and 0.21 eV over Rydberg transitions. Using a larger basis set, aug-pc3, improves accuracy over the valence transitions via hybrid functionals, but improved accuracy over the Rydberg transitions is only obtained via the BMK functional. For adiabatic transitions, all hybrid functionals paired with the MG3S basis set perform well, and B98 is best, with a mean absolute deviation from experiment of 0.09 eV. The testing of EPT used the Outer Valence Green's Function (OVGF) approximation and the Partial Third Order (P3) approximation on 37 vertical first ionization energies. It is found that OVGF outperforms P3 when basis sets of at least triple-ζ quality in the polarization functions are used. The largest basis set used in this study, aug-pc3, obtained the best mean absolute error from both methods -0.08 eV for OVGF and 0.18 eV for P3. The OVGF/6-31+G(2df,p) level of theory is particularly cost-effective, yielding a mean absolute error of 0.11 eV.