A density-functional study on pi-aromatic interaction: benzene dimer and naphthalene dimer

The long-range correction (LC) scheme of density-functional theory (DFT) was applied to the calculation of the pi-aromatic interaction of the benzene dimer and naphthalene dimer. In previous calculations, it was confirmed that the LC scheme [Iikura et al., J. Chem. Phys. 115, 3540 (2001)] gives very accurate potential- energy surfaces (PESs) of small van der Waals (vdW) complexes by combining with the Anderson-Langreth-Lundqvist (ALL) vdW correlation functional [Andersson et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 102 (1996)] (LC-DFT + ALL). In this study, LC-DFT+ALL method was examined by calculating a wide range of PES of the benzene dimer including parallel, T-shaped, and parallel-displaced configurations. As a result, we succeeded in reproducing very accurate PES within the energy deviance of less than 1 kcalmol in comparison with the results of high-level ab initio molecular-orbital methods at all reference points on the PES. It was also found that LC-DFT + ALL gave accurate results independent of exchange-correlation functional used, in contrast with the strong functional dependencies of conventional pure functionals. This indicates that both exchange repulsion and van der Waals attractive interactions should be correctly incorporated in conventional pure functionals in order to calculate accurate pi-aromatic interactions. We also found that LC-DFT + ALL method has a low basis-set dependency in the calculations of pi-aromatic interactions. The present scheme was also successfully applied to the pi,[ellipsis (horizontal)],pi stacking interactions of naphthalene dimer. This may suggest that LC-DFT + ALL method would be a powerful tool in the calculations of large molecules such as biomolecules.