Reliability of range-separated hybrid functionals for describing magnetic coupling in molecular systems

The performance of the Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhorf (HSE) and single parameter long-range corrected Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhorf (LC-omega PBE) range-separated hybrids for predicting magnetic coupling constants has been investigated for a broad set of magnetic molecular systems for which accurate experimental data exist. The set includes the H-He-H model system, two organic diradicals with different magnetic behaviors, and a series of Cu dinuclear complexes with a broad range of magnetic coupling values. Both HSE and LC-omega PBE provide a significant improvement to standard hybrids such as the well-known hybrid Becke-3-parameters exchange with Lee-Yang-Parr correlation (B3LYP) functional. Nevertheless, the performance of these two range-separated hybrid functionals is different: HSE overestimates antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic interactions in Cu dinuclear complexes (although significantly less than B3LYP), whereas LC-omega PBE treats ferro- and antiferromagnetic couplings on a much more balanced way. The increased accuracy of LC-omega PBE suggests that the inclusion of 100% Hartree-Fock exchange considered in the definition of this long-range corrected hybrid functional has important consequences for an accurate description of exchange and correlation effects on the electronic structure of open shell systems. On the other hand, HSE, which was developed with periodic systems in mind, also performs quite well (and better than B3LYP) thus opening the possibility of magnetic coupling studies in metal oxides and other challenging solids.