This research provides a performance investigation of density functional theory and also proposes new functional parameterizations to deal with electric field gradient (EFG) calculations at nuclear positions. The entire procedure is conducted within the four-component formalism. First, we noticed that traditional hybrid and long-range corrected functionals are more efficient in the description of EFG variations for a set of elements (indium, antimony, iodine, lutetium, and hafnium) among linear molecules. Thus, we selected the PBE0, B3LYP, and CAM-B3LYP functionals and promoted a reoptimization of their parameters for a better description of these EFG changes. The PBE0q variant developed here showed an overall promising performance in a validation test conducted with potassium, iodine, copper, and gold. In general, the correlation coefficients found in linear regressions between experimental nuclear quadrupole coupling constants and calculated EFGs are improved while the systematic EFG errors also decrease as a result of this reparameterization.
Keywords: density functionals; electric field gradients; nuclear quadrupole moments; relativistic effects.
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