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Invited Article
Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2007, 9, 2932 - 2941, DOI: 10.1039/b617919c
A well-tempered density functional theory of electrons in molecules
Ester Livshits and Roi Baer
This Invited Article reports extensions of a recently developed approach to density functional theory with correct long-range behavior (R. Baer and D. Neuhauser, Phys. Rev. Lett., 2005, 94, 043002). The central quantities are a splitting functional
[n] and a complementary exchange–correlation functional E
XC[n]. We give a practical method for determining the value of
in molecules, assuming an approximation for E
XC is given. The resulting theory shows good ability to reproduce the ionization potentials for various molecules. However it is not of sufficient accuracy for forming a satisfactory framework for studying molecular properties. A somewhat different approach is then adopted, which depends on a density-independent
and an additional parameter w eliminating part of the local exchange functional. The values of these two parameters are obtained by best-fitting to experimental atomization energies and bond lengths of the molecules in the G2(1) database. The optimized values are
= 0.5 a–10 and w = 0.1. We then examine the performance of this slightly semi-empirical functional for a variety of molecular properties, comparing to related works and experiment. We show that this approach can be used for describing in a satisfactory manner a broad range of molecular properties, be they static or dynamic. Most satisfactory is the ability to describe valence, Rydberg and inter-molecular charge-transfer excitations.
