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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 EXC[n]. We give a practical method for determining the value of in molecules, assuming an approximation for EXC 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.

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