Electron correlation in the Iron(II) Porphyrin by NOF approximations

TL;DR

This study evaluates electron correlation effects in Iron(II) porphyrin's spin states using advanced natural orbital functionals, revealing the importance of dynamic correlation in accurately predicting the ground state.

Contribution

It introduces the use of GNOF, a new functional that correlates all electrons and orbitals, improving the prediction of the stable spin state of FeP.

Findings

GNOF predicts the triplet as the ground state after dynamic correlation correction.

Previous PNOF methods favored the quintet as the ground state.

Dynamic correlation significantly influences the stability order of FeP's spin states.

Abstract

The relative stability of the singlet, triplet, and quintet spin states of Iron(II) porphyrin (FeP) represents a challenging problem for electronic structure methods. While it is currently accepted that the ground state is a triplet, multiconfigurational wavefunction-based methods predict a quintet, and density functional approximations vary between triplet and quintet states, leading to a prediction that highly depends on the features of the method employed. The recently proposed Global Natural Orbital Functional (GNOF) aims to provide a balanced treatment between static and dynamic correlation, and together with the previous Piris Natural Orbital Functionals (PNOFs), allowed us to explore the importance of each type of correlation in the stability order of the states of FeP with a method that conserves the spin of the system. It is noteworthy that GNOF correlates all electrons in all available orbitals for a given basis set; in the case of the FeP with a double zeta basis set as used in this work; this means that GNOF can properly correlate 186 electrons in 465 orbitals, significantly increasing the sizes of systems amenable to multiconfigurational treatment. Results show that PNOF5, PNOF7s and PNOF7 predict the quintet to have a lower energy than the triplet state; however, the addition of dynamic correlation via second-order Moller-Plesset corrections (NOF-MP2) turns the triplet state to be lower than the quintet state, a prediction also reproduced by GNOF that incorporates much more dynamic correlation than its predecessors.