Hardness of molecules and bandgap of solids from a generalized gradient approximation exchange energy functional

Abstract

The deviations from linearity of the energy as a function of the number of electrons that arise with current approximations to the exchange–correlation (XC) energy functional have important consequences for the frontier eigenvalues of molecules and the corresponding valence-band maxima for solids. In this work, we present an analysis of the exact theory that allows one to infer the effects of such approximations on the highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital eigenvalues. Then, we show the importance of the asymptotic behavior of the XC potential in the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) in the case of the NCAPR functional (nearly correct asymptotic potential revised) for determining the shift of the frontier orbital eigenvalues toward the exact values. Thereby we establish a procedure at the GGA level of refinement that allows one to make a single calculation to determine the ionization potential, the electron affinity, and the hardness of molecules (and its solid counterpart, the bandgap) with an accuracy equivalent to that obtained for those properties through energy differences, a procedure that requires three calculations. For solids, the accuracy achieved for the bandgap lies rather close to that which is obtained through hybrid XC energy functionals, but those also demand much greater computational effort than what is required with the simple NCAPR GGA calculation.