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Updated: May 10, 2026

Spatial Separation of Molecular Conformers and Clusters
Published on: January 9, 2014
Nonlocal van der Waals functionals: the case of rare-gas dimers and solids
1Institute of Physical Chemistry, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Recently, the nonlocal van der Waals (vdW) density functionals [M. Dion, H. Rydberg, E. Schröder, D. C. Langreth, and B. I. Lundqvist, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 246401 (2004)] have attracted considerable attention due to their good performance for systems where weak interactions are important. Since the physics of dispersion is included in these functionals, they are usually more accurate and show less erratic behavior than the semilocal and hybrid methods. In this work, several variants of the vdW functionals have been tested on rare-gas dimers (from He2 to Kr2) and solids (Ne, Ar, and Kr) and their accuracy compared to standard semilocal approximations, supplemented or not by an atom-pairwise dispersion correction [S. Grimme, J. Antony, S. Ehrlich, and H. Krieg, J. Chem. Phys. 132, 154104 (2010)]. An analysis of the results in terms of energy decomposition is also provided.
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