van der Waals interactions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon dimers -: art. no. 054102

Density functional theory is in principle exact and includes also long-range interactions, such as the van der Waals interactions. These are, however, part of the exchange-correlation energy functional that needs to be approximated, and are absent in the local and semilocal standard implementations. Recently a density functional which includes van der Waals interactions for planar systems has been developed [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 126402 (2003)], which we show can be extended to provide a treatment of planar molecules. We use this functional to calculate binding distances and energies for dimers of three of the smallest polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)-naphthalene, anthracene, and pyrene.(C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.