Benchmarking isotropic hyperfine coupling constants using (QTP) DFT functionals and coupled cluster theory

Significant effort has been devoted to benchmarking isotropic hyperfine coupling constants for both wavefunction and density-based approaches in recent years, as accurate theoretical predictions aid the fitting of experimental model Hamiltonians. However, literature examining the predictive quality of a Density Functional Theory (DFT) functional abiding by the Bartlett IP condition is absent. In an attempt to rectify this, we report isotropic hyperfine coupling constant predictions of 24 commonly used DFT functionals on a total of 56 radicals, with the intent of exploring the successes and failures of the Quantum Theory Project (QTP) line of DFT functionals (i.e., CAM-QTP00, CAM-QTP01, CAM-QTP02, and QTP17) for this property. Included in this benchmark study are both small and large organic radicals as well as transition metal complexes, all of which have been studied to some extent in prior work. Subsequent coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) and CCSD withperturbative triples [CCSD(T)] calculations on small and large organic radicals show modest improvement as compared to prior work and offer an additional avenue for evaluation of DFT functional performance. We find that the QTP17 and CAM-QTP00 functionals consistently underperform, despite being parameterized to satisfy an IP eigenvalue condition primarily focused on inner shell electrons. On the other hand, the CAM-QTP01 functional is the most accurate functional in both organic radical datasets. Furthermore, both CAM-QTP01 and CAM-QTP02 are the most accurate functionals tested on the transition metal dataset. A significant portion of functionals were found to have comparable errors (within 5-15 MHz), but the hybrid class of DFT functionals maintains a consistently optimal balance between accuracy and precision across all datasets.