Hybrid density functional theory for pi-stacking interactions: application to benzenes, pyridines, and DNA bases

The suitability of a hybrid density functional to qualitatively reproduce geometric and energetic details of parallel pi-stacked aromatic complexes is presented. The hybrid functional includes an ad hoc mixture of half the exact (HF) exchange with half of the uniform electron gas exchange, plus Lee, Yang, and Parr's expression for correlation energy. This functional, in combination with polarized, diffuse basis sets, gives a binding energy for the parallel-displaced benzene dimer in good agreement with the best available high-level calculations reported in the literature, and qualitatively reproduces the local MP2 potential energy surface of the parallel-displaced benzene dimer. This method was further critically compared to high-level calculations recently reported in the literature for a range of pi-stacked complexes, including monosubstituted benzene-benzene dimers, along with DNA and RNA bases, and generally agrees with MP2 and/or CCSD(T) results to within +/-2 kJ mol(-1). We also show that the resulting BH&H binding energy is closely related to the electron density in the intermolecular region. The net result is that the BH&H functional, presumably due to fortuitous cancellation of errors, provides a pragmatic, computationally efficient quantum mechanical tool for the study of large pi-stacked systems such as DNA.