Pure Density Functionals Research Articles

Exchange-correlation effects in interatomic energies for pure density functionals and their application to the molecular energy prediction.

In this proof-of-concept paper, we show how exchange-correlation effects can be simply recovered for interatomic energies within the interacting quantum atoms decomposition when local, gradient generalized, or meta-gradient generalized approximations are used in density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We also demonstrate how inhomogeneity and non-local effects can be introduced even from a pure local scheme, without resorting to any orbital information. Finally, we provide numerical evidence on a database of selected energetic molecules that this decomposition scheme can be efficiently used to build accurate models for the prediction of molecular energies from an initial "cheap" DFT calculation.

Reformulation of All ONIOM-Type Molecular Fragmentation Approaches and Many-Body Theories Using Graph-Theory-Based Projection Operators: Applications to Dynamics, Molecular Potential Surfaces, Machine Learning, and Quantum Computing.

We present a graph-theory-based reformulation of all ONIOM-based molecular fragmentation methods. We discuss applications to (a) accurate post-Hartree-Fock AIMD that can be conducted at DFT cost for medium-sized systems, (b) hybrid DFT condensed-phase studies at the cost of pure density functionals, (c) reduced cost on-the-fly large basis gas-phase AIMD and condensed-phase studies, (d) post-Hartree-Fock-level potential surfaces at DFT cost to obtain quantum nuclear effects, and (e) novel transfer machine learning protocols derived from these measures. Additionally, in previous work, the unifying strategy discussed here has been used to construct new quantum computing algorithms. Thus, we conclude that this reformulation is robust and accurate.

Approaching the basis set limit in Gaussian-orbital-based periodic calculations with transferability: Performance of pure density functionals for simple semiconductors.

Simulating solids with quantum chemistry methods and Gaussian-type orbitals (GTOs) has been gaining popularity. Nonetheless, there are few systematic studies that assess the basis set incompleteness error (BSIE) in these GTO-based simulations over a variety of solids. In this work, we report a GTO-based implementation for solids and apply it to address the basis set convergence issue. We employ a simple strategy to generate large uncontracted (unc) GTO basis sets that we call the unc-def2-GTH sets. These basis sets exhibit systematic improvement toward the basis set limit as well as good transferability based on application to a total of 43 simple semiconductors. Most notably, we found the BSIE of unc-def2-QZVP-GTH to be smaller than 0.7 mEh per atom in total energies and 20 meV in bandgaps for all systems considered here. Using unc-def2-QZVP-GTH, we report bandgap benchmarks of a combinatorially designed meta-generalized gradient approximation (mGGA) functional, B97M-rV, and show that B97M-rV performs similarly (a root-mean-square-deviation of 1.18eV) to other modern mGGA functionals, M06-L (1.26eV), MN15-L (1.29eV), and Strongly Constrained and Appropriately Normed (SCAN) (1.20eV). This represents a clear improvement over older pure functionals such as local density approximation (1.71eV) and Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) (1.49eV), although all these mGGAs are still far from being quantitatively accurate. We also provide several cautionary notes on the use of our uncontracted bases and on future research on GTO basis set development for solids.

Approaching the Basis Set Limit in Gaussian-Orbital-Based Periodic Calculations with Transferability: Performance of Pure Density Functionals for Simple Semiconductors

Approaching the Basis Set Limit in Gaussian-Orbital-Based Periodic Calculations with Transferability: Performance of Pure Density Functionals for Simple Semiconductors

Embedded, graph‐theoretically defined many‐body approximations for wavefunction‐in‐DFT and DFT‐in‐DFT: Applications to gas‐ and condensed‐phase ab initio molecular dynamics, and potential surfaces for quantum nuclear effects

AbstractWe present a graph‐theoretic approach to adaptively compute many‐body approximations in an efficient manner to perform (a) accurate post‐Hartree–Fock (HF) ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) at density functional theory (DFT) cost for medium‐ to large‐sized molecular clusters, (b) hybrid DFT electronic structure calculations for condensed‐phase simulations at the cost of pure density functionals, (c) reduced‐cost on‐the‐fly basis extrapolation for gas‐phase AIMD and condensed phase studies, and (d) accurate post‐HF‐level potential energy surfaces at DFT cost for quantum nuclear effects. The salient features of our approach are ONIOM‐like in that (a) the full system (cluster or condensed phase) calculation is performed at a lower level of theory (pure DFT for condensed phase or hybrid DFT for molecular systems), and (b) this approximation is improved through a correction term that captures all many‐body interactions up to any given order within a higher level of theory (hybrid DFT for condensed phase; CCSD or MP2 for cluster), combined through graph‐theoretic methods. Specifically, a region of chemical interest is coarse‐grained into a set of nodes and these nodes are then connected to form edges based on a given definition of local envelope (or threshold) of interactions. The nodes and edges together define a graph, which forms the basis for developing the many‐body expansion. The methods are demonstrated through (a) ab initio dynamics studies on protonated water clusters and polypeptide fragments, (b) potential energy surface calculations on one‐dimensional water chains such as those found in ion channels, and (c) conformational stabilization and lattice energy studies on homogeneous and heterogeneous surfaces of water with organic adsorbates using two‐dimensional periodic boundary conditions.

Benchmarking the Performance of Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory Methods on Biochromophores.

Quantum chemical calculations are important for elucidating light-capturing mechanisms in photobiological systems. The time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) has become a popular methodology because of its balance between accuracy and computational scaling, despite its problems in describing, for example, charge transfer states. As a step toward systematically understanding the performance of TDDFT calculations on biomolecular systems, we study here 17 commonly used density functionals, including seven long-range separated functionals, and compare the obtained results with excitation energies calculated at the approximate second order coupled-cluster theory level (CC2). The benchmarking set includes the first five singlet excited states of 11 chemical analogues of biochromophores from the green fluorescent protein, rhodopsin/bacteriorhodopsin (Rh/bR), and the photoactive yellow protein. We find that commonly used pure density functionals such as BP86, PBE, M11-L, and hybrid functionals with 20-25% of Hartree-Fock (HF) exchange (B3LYP, PBE0) have a tendency to consistently underestimate vertical excitation energies (VEEs) relative to the CC2 values, whereas hybrid density functionals with around 50% HF exchange such as BHLYP, PBE50, and M06-2X and long-range corrected functionals such as CAM-B3LYP, ωPBE, ωPBEh, ωB97X, ωB97XD, BNL, and M11 overestimate the VEEs. We observe that calculations using the CAM-B3LYP and ωPBEh functionals with 65% and 100% long-range HF exchange, respectively, lead to an overestimation of the VEEs by 0.2-0.3 eV for the benchmarking set. To reduce the systematic error, we introduce here two new empirical functionals, CAMh-B3LYP and ωhPBE0, for which we adjusted the long-range HF exchange to 50%. The introduced parameterization reduces the mean signed average (MSA) deviation to 0.07 eV and the root mean square (rms) deviation to 0.17 eV as compared to the CC2 values. In the present study, TDDFT calculations using the aug-def2-TZVP basis sets, the best performing functionals relative to CC2 are ωhPBE0 (rms = 0.17, MSA = 0.06 eV); CAMh-B3LYP (rms = 0.16, MSA = 0.07 eV); and PBE0 (rms = 0.23, MSA = -0.14 eV). For the popular range-separated CAM-B3LYP functional, we obtain an rms value of 0.31 eV and an MSA value of 0.25 eV, which can be compared with the rms and MSA values of 0.37 and -0.31 eV, respectively, as obtained at the B3LYP level.

Efficient and Accurate Prediction of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Shielding Tensors with Double-Hybrid Density Functional Theory.

Analytic calculation of nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shielding tensors, based on gauge-including atomic orbitals, is implemented for double-hybrid density functional theory (DHDFT), using the resolution of the identity (RI) approximation for its second order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) correlation contributions. A benchmark set of 15 small molecules, containing 1H, 13C, 15N, 17O, 19F, and 31P nuclei, is used to assess the accuracy of the results in comparison to coupled cluster and empirical equilibrium reference data, as well as to calculations with MP2, Hartree-Fock, and commonly used pure and hybrid density functionals. Investigated are also errors due to basis set incompleteness, the frozen core approximation, different auxiliary basis sets for the RI approximation, and grids used for the chain-of-spheres exchange integral evaluation. The DSD-PBEP86 double-hybrid functional shows the smallest deviations from the reference data with mean absolute relative error in chemical shifts of 1.9%. This is significantly better than MP2 (4.1%), spin-component-scaled MP2 (3.9%), or the best conventional density functional tested, M06L (5.4%). A protocol (basis sets, grid sizes, etc.) for the efficient and accurate calculation of chemical shifts at the DHDFT level is proposed and shown to be routinely applicable to systems of 100-400 electrons, requiring computation times 1-2 orders of magnitude longer than for equivalent calculations with conventional (pure or hybrid) density functionals.

Reliable Estimation of Prediction Uncertainty for Physicochemical Property Models.

One of the major challenges in computational science is to determine the uncertainty of a virtual measurement, that is the prediction of an observable based on calculations. As highly accurate first-principles calculations are in general unfeasible for most physical systems, one usually resorts to parameteric property models of observables, which require calibration by incorporating reference data. The resulting predictions and their uncertainties are sensitive to systematic errors such as inconsistent reference data, parametric model assumptions, or inadequate computational methods. Here, we discuss the calibration of property models in the light of bootstrapping, a sampling method that can be employed for identifying systematic errors and for reliable estimation of the prediction uncertainty. We apply bootstrapping to assess a linear property model linking the 57Fe Mössbauer isomer shift to the contact electron density at the iron nucleus for a diverse set of 44 molecular iron compounds. The contact electron density is calculated with 12 density functionals across Jacob's ladder (PWLDA, BP86, BLYP, PW91, PBE, M06-L, TPSS, B3LYP, B3PW91, PBE0, M06, TPSSh). We provide systematic-error diagnostics and reliable, locally resolved uncertainties for isomer-shift predictions. Pure and hybrid density functionals yield average prediction uncertainties of 0.06-0.08 mm s-1 and 0.04-0.05 mm s-1, respectively, the latter being close to the average experimental uncertainty of 0.02 mm s-1. Furthermore, we show that both model parameters and prediction uncertainty depend significantly on the composition and number of reference data points. Accordingly, we suggest that rankings of density functionals based on performance measures (e.g., the squared coefficient of correlation, r2, or the root-mean-square error, RMSE) should not be inferred from a single data set. This study presents the first statistically rigorous calibration analysis for theoretical Mössbauer spectroscopy, which is of general applicability for physicochemical property models and not restricted to isomer-shift predictions. We provide the statistically meaningful reference data set MIS39 and a new calibration of the isomer shift based on the PBE0 functional.

Dependence of Nonadiabatic Couplings with Kohn-Sham Orbitals on the Choice of Density Functional: Pure vs Hybrid.

Nonadiabatic molecular dynamics (NA-MD) is an extremely useful approach to model electron transfer dynamics in molecular and solid state systems. The performance of NA-MD simulations depends critically on the accuracy of the underlying electronic structure properties, such as state energies and nonadiabatic couplings (NAC). Practical NA-MD modeling relies extensively on computationally efficient pure density functionals, despite the known intrinsic problems of the latter. A reliable solution to the problems presented by the use of pure density functionals, is the use of hybrid functionals, however hybrid functionals are significantly more expensive. In this work, we investigate how the choice of the density functional can affect the NAC magnitudes for small silicon clusters and silicon hydrides. We find that pure functionals can significantly overestimate NAC magnitudes in comparison to those obtained with hybrid functionals. The ratio of the two magnitudes increases with the system size and differs by an order of magnitude even for small Si7 and Si26 clusters. We present a detailed analysis of the correlations of the NACs computed with different methods, discuss the fundamental grounds for the observed differences, and propose a simple scaling technique for correcting NACs that can be used within the context of NA-MD simulations.

Spin State Energetics and Oxyl Character of Mn-Oxo Porphyrins by Multiconfigurational ab Initio Calculations: Implications on Reactivity.

Important electromeric states in manganese-oxo porphyrins MnO(P)(+) and MnO(PF4)(+) (porphyrinato or meso-tetrafluoroporphyrinato) have been investigated with correlated ab initio methods (CASPT2, RASPT2), focusing on their possible role in multistate reactivity patterns in oxygen transfer (OAT) reactions. Due to the lack of oxyl character, the Mn(V) singlet ground state is kinetically inert. OAT reactions should therefore rather proceed through thermally accessible triplet and quintet states that have a more pronounced oxyl character. Two states have been identified as possible candidates: a Mn(V) triplet state and a Mn(IV)O(L(•)a2u)(+) quintet state. The latter state is high-lying in MnO(P)(+) but is stabilized by the substitutions of H by F at the meso carbons (where the a2u orbital has a significant amplitude). Oxyl character and Mn-O bond weakening in these two states stems from the fact that the Mn-O π* orbitals become singly (triplet) or doubly occupied (quintet). Moreover, an important role for the reactivity of the triplet state is also likely to be played by the π bond that has an empty π* orbital, because of the manifest diradical character of this π bond, revealed by the CASSCF wave function. Interestingly, the diradical character of this bond increases when the Mn-O bond is stretched, while the singly occupied π* orbital looses its oxygen radical contribution. The RASPT2 results were also used as a benchmark for the description of excited state energetics and Mn-O oxyl character with a wide range of pure and hybrid density functionals. With the latter functionals both the Mn(V) → Mn(IV) promotion energy and the diradical character of the π bond (with empty π*) are found to be extremely dependent on the contribution of exact exchange. For this reason, pure functionals are to be preferred.

Critical Assessment of TD-DFT for Excited States of Open-Shell Systems: I. Doublet-Doublet Transitions.

A benchmark set of 11 small radicals is set up to assess the performance of time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) for the excited states of open-shell systems. Both the unrestricted (U-TD-DFT) and spin-adapted (X-TD-DFT) formulations of TD-DFT are considered. For comparison, the well-established EOM-CCSD (equation-of-motion coupled-cluster with singles and doubles) is also used. In total, 111 low-lying singly excited doublet states are accessed by all the three approaches. Taking the MRCISD+Q (multireference configuration interaction with singles and doubles plus the Davidson correction) results as the benchmark, it is found that both U-TD-DFT and EOM-CCSD perform well for those states dominated by singlet-coupled single excitations (SCSE) from closed-shell to open-shell, open-shell to vacant-shell, or closed-shell to vacant-shell orbitals. However, for those states dominated by triplet-coupled single excitations (TCSE) from closed-shell to vacant-shell orbitals, both U-TD-DFT and EOM-CCSD fail miserably due to severe spin contaminations. In contrast, X-TD-DFT provides balanced descriptions of both SCSE and TCSE. As far as the functional dependence is concerned, it is found that, when the Hartree-Fock ground state does not suffer from the instability problem, both global hybrid (GH) and range-separated hybrid (RSH) functionals perform grossly better than pure density functionals, especially for Rydberg and charge-transfer excitations. However, if the Hartree-Fock ground state is instable or nearly instable, GH and RSH tend to underestimate severely the excitation energies. The SAOP (statistically averaging of model orbital potentials) performs more uniformly than any other density functionals, although it generally overestimates the excitation energies of valence excitations. Not surprisingly, both EOM-CCSD and adiabatic TD-DFT are incapable of describing excited states with substantial double excitation characters.

Electronic excitation energies in dimers between radical ions presenting long, multicenter bonding.

The formation of long, multicenter dimers between radical ions is usually monitored through UV-vis spectroscopy given the characteristic low-energy absorption band that they exhibit, not observed for the parent monomers. In this work, the performance of CASPT2, RASPT2, and TD-DFT methods for obtaining excitation energies of the long, multicenter bonded π-[TCNE]2(2-) and π-[TTF]2(2+) dimers has been addressed (TCNE = tetracyanoethylene; TTF = tetrathiafulvalene). The impact of the active space on the vertical electronic transitions computed at the RASPT2 and CASPT2 levels has been tested against experimentally observed absorption bands. Analogous tests have been carried out for a wide variety of density functionals within the TD-DFT formalism. Our calculations show that whereas CASPT2 predicts very accurate excitation energies for the π-[TCNE]2(2-), the mean absolute error for π-[TTF]2(2+) is higher for CASPT2 than for TD-DFT calculations, whenever pure density functionals or low % HF exchange hybrid functionals are used. Hybrid functionals with high % HF exchange (and thus RSH functionals) conduct to large errors on the excitation energies in both dimers. Furthermore, vertical electronic transitions are also obtained for 100 configurations extracted from a 45 ps molecular dynamics (CPMD) simulation aimed at providing an accurate description of the thermal fluctuation effects of a π-[TCNE]2(2-) dimer in dichloromethane. These thermal effects explain the shape of the experimental UV-vis spectrum, where the lowest HOMO → LUMO absorption presents a broad band and the following HOMO-1 → LUMO absorption exhibits a narrower band.

Efficient implementation of the analytic second derivatives of Hartree–Fock and hybrid DFT energies: a detailed analysis of different approximations

In this paper, various implementations of the analytic Hartree–Fock and hybrid density functional energy second derivatives are studied. An approximation-free four-centre implementation is presented, and its accuracy is rigorously analysed in terms of self-consistent field (SCF), coupled-perturbed SCF (CP-SCF) convergence and prescreening criteria. The CP-SCF residual norm convergence threshold turns out to be the most important of these. Final choices of convergence thresholds are made such that an accuracy of the vibrational frequencies of better than 5 cm−1 compared to the numerical noise-free results is obtained, even for the highly sensitive low frequencies (<100–200 cm−1). The effects of the choice of numerical grid for density functional exchange–correlation integrations are studied and various weight derivative schemes are analysed in detail. In the second step of the work, approximations are introduced in order to speed up the computation without compromising its accuracy. To this end, the accuracy and efficiency of the resolution of identity approximation for the Coulomb terms and the semi-numerical chain of spheres approximation to the exchange terms are carefully analysed. It is shown that the largest performance improvements are realised if either Hartree–Fock exchange is absent (pure density functionals) and otherwise, if the exchange terms in the CP-SCF step of the calculation are approximated by the COSX method in conjunction with a small integration grid. Default values for all the involved truncation parameters are suggested. For vancomycine (176 atoms and 3593 basis functions), the RIJCOSX Hessian calculation with the B3LYP functional and the def2-TZVP basis set takes ∼3 days using 16 Intel® Xeon® 2.60GHz processors with the COSX algorithm having a net parallelisation scaling of 11.9 which is at least ∼20 times faster than the calculation without the RIJCOSX approximation.

Vertical excitation energies of linear cyanine dyes by spin-flip time-dependent density functional theory

Vertical excitation energies of linear cyanine dyes are examined using the spin-flip time-dependent density functional theory. The Hartree–Fock exchange (HFX) plays an essential role in predicting the absorption spectra, and the best values are obtained by the combination of collinear approximation and hybrid functionals with ∼50% HFX. The non-collinear approach with pure density functionals underestimates the excitation energy severely. The significant error is due to low excitation energy from the reference triplet to first excited singlet state. The excitation energy decomposition gives small orbital energy difference term and large negative non-collinear kernel.

Two-component hybrid time-dependent density functional theory within the Tamm-Dancoff approximation.

We report the implementation of a two-component variant of time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) for hybrid functionals that accounts for spin-orbit effects within the Tamm-Dancoff approximation (TDA) for closed-shell systems. The influence of the admixture of Hartree-Fock exchange on excitation energies is investigated for several atoms and diatomic molecules by comparison to numbers for pure density functionals obtained previously [M. Kühn and F. Weigend, J. Chem. Theory Comput. 9, 5341 (2013)]. It is further related to changes upon switching to the local density approximation or using the full TDDFT formalism instead of TDA. Efficiency is demonstrated for a comparably large system, Ir(ppy)3 (61 atoms, 1501 basis functions, lowest 10 excited states), which is a prototype molecule for organic light-emitting diodes, due to its "spin-forbidden" triplet-singlet transition.

Tests of second-generation and third-generation density functionals for electron affinities of the alkylthio radicals

The molecular structures and electron affinities of the R – S / R – S -( R = CH 3, C 2 H 5, n- C 3 H 7, n- C 4 H 9, n- C 5 H 11, i- C 3 H 7, i- C 4 H 9, t- C 4 H 9) species have been studied using 17 pure and hybrid density functionals (five generalized gradient approximation (GGA) methods, six hybrid GGAs, one meta GGA method and five hybrid meta GGAs). The basis set used in this work is of double-ζ plus polarization quality with additional diffuse s- and p-type functions, denoted by DZP++. The geometries are fully optimized with each DFT method and discussed. Harmonic vibrational frequencies are found to be within 3.5% of available experimental values for most functionals. Three different types of the neutral-anion energy separations have been presented. The theoretical electron affinities of alkylthio radicals are in good agreement with the experiment data. The M06 method is very good for the adiabatic electron affinity calculations, and the average absolute error is 0.0439 eV. The HCTH method performs better for EA prediction. The M06-HF, mPWPW91, VSXC and B98 are also reasonable. The most reliable adiabatic electron affinities are predicted to be 1.864 eV ( CH 3 S ), 1.946 eV ( C 2 H 5 S ), 1.959 eV (n- C 3 H 7 S ), 1.970 eV (n- C 4 H 9 S ), 1.982 eV (n- C 5 H 11 S ), 2.053 eV (i- C 3 H 7 S ), 1.991 eV (i- C 4 H 9 S ) and 2.100 eV (t- C 4 H 9 S ) at the M06/DZP++ level of theory, respectively.

Photoexcitation of Light-Harvesting C–P–C60 Triads: A FLMO-TD-DFT Study

The recently proposed linear-scaling time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) [ J. Chem. Comput. 2011 , 7 , 3643 ] is employed to capture more than 300 low-lying excited states for three light-harvesting C-P-C60 triads composed of β-carotenoid polyene (C), diaryl-based porphyrin (P), and pyrrole-fullerene (C60). The simulated optical absorption spectra are grossly in good agreement with experimental observations. To gain insights on the structure-property relations, both top-down and bottom-up analyses of the excited states are made in terms of the underlying fragment localized molecular orbitals (FLMO). A maximum occupation method is further proposed for finding excited-state solutions of self-consistent-field equations and is applied to long-range charge-transfer states that cannot be described by TD-DFT with pure density functionals.

Insights into the interactions of CO2 with amines: a DFT benchmark study.

The interaction between CO2 and 1,2-diaminoethane was computed using pure and hybrid density functionals. The CAM-B3LYP and wB97X-D functionals using a triple-ζ basis set that includes diffuse and polarization functions are the best functionals for calculating the relative energies of the zwitterion intermediate compared to a coupled-cluster with a single, double and non-iterative triple excitation (CCSD(T)) approach extrapolated to a complete basis set limit. With the two functionals and the triple-ζ basis set, the zwitterion is 1.70 kcal mol(-1) less stable than the reactants, and close to 1.63 kcal mol(-1) computed using the CCSD(T) approach. The inclusion of vibrational and thermal corrections and of entropic effects increases the relative energy of the zwitterion to 14.7 kcal mol(-1). Bending of the CO2 geometry increases its acidity due to a 1.09 eV reduction in the LUMO energy. Calculation of the CO2 interaction energy with a set of amines revealed that the interaction energies show a high correlation with their basicities, with the stronger bases stabilizing the zwitterion. For the most basic amine computed (3,4,6,7,8,9-hexahydro-2H-pyrimido[1,2-a]pyrimidine), the Gibbs free energy of the zwitterion is 15.8 kcal mol(-1) lower than the reactants. Therefore, for this highly basic amine, the zwitterion may have a longer lifetime, in contrast to 2-aminoethanol (MEA), where it is only a transient species.

Studies on structures and electron affinities of the simplest alkyl dithio radicals and their anions with gaussian-3 theory and density functional theory

The equilibrium geometries and electron affinities of the R-SS/R-SS(-)(R=CH₃, C₂H₅, n-C₃H7, i-C₃H₇, n-C₄H₉, t-C₄H₉, n-C₅H₁₁) species have been studied using the higher level of the Gaussian-3(G3) theory and 21 carefully calibrated pure and hybrid density functionals (five generalized gradient approximation (GGA) methods, seven hybrid GGAs, three meta GGA methods, and six hybrid meta GGAs) in conjunction with diffuse function augmented double-ζ plus polarization (DZP++) basis sets. The geometries are fully optimized with each method and discussed. The reliable adiabatic electron affinity has been presented by means of the high level of G3 technique. With the DZP++ DFT method, three measures of neutral/anion energy differences reported in this work are the adiabatic electron affinity, the vertical electron affinity, and the vertical detachment energy. The adiabatic electron affinities, obtained at the BP86, M05-2X, B3LYP, M06, B98, M06-2X, mPW1PW91, HCTH, B97-1, M05, PBE1PBE, and VSXC methods, are in agreement with the G3 results. These methods perform better for EA prediction and are considered to be reliable.

Alkyl mercury compounds: an assessment of DFT methods

A series of hybrid and pure density functionals have been assessed in order to provide a reliable description of infrared spectra of alkyl mercury compounds. The theoretical assessment also includes other physicochemical properties, as ionization energies and binding energies. The accuracy of the results was tested through the available experimental data and CCSD(T) calculations. B3LYP functional provides the smallest average error of all functionals considering the whole set of properties, and it offers very good results in IR spectra in particular, although other functionals as BP86, M06-L or mPW1PW91 can give even better results when looking at one particular property. Hybrid functionals B3PW91 and X3LYP and doublehybrid B2PLYP follow B3LYP in the list of most wellbehaved functionals.