Can simple ‘molecular’ corrections outperform projector augmented-wave density functional theory in the prediction of 35Cl electric field gradient tensor parameters for chlorine-containing crystalline systems?

Many-body expansion (MBE) fragment approaches have been applied to accurately compute nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) parameters in crystalline systems. Recent examples demonstrate that electric field gradient (EFG) tensor parameters can be accurately calculated for ¹⁴N and ¹⁷O. A key additional development is the simple molecular correction (SMC) approach, which uses two one-body fragment (i.e., isolated molecule) calculations to adjust NMR parameter values established using ‘benchmark’ projector augmented-wave (PAW) density functional theory (DFT) values. Here, we apply a SMC using the hybrid PBE0 exchange-correlation (XC) functional to see if this can improve the accuracy of calculated ³⁵Cl EFG tensor parameters. We selected eight organic and two inorganic crystal structures and considered 15 chlorine sites. We find that this SMC improves the accuracy of computed values for both the ³⁵Cl quadrupolar coupling constant (C_Q) and the asymmetry parameter ( ${\eta }_Q$) by approximately 30% compared with benchmark PAW DFT values. We also assessed a SMC that offers local improvements not only in terms of the quality of the XC functional but simultaneously in the quality of the description of relativistic effects via the inclusion of spin–orbit effects. As the inorganic systems considered contain heavy atoms bonded to the chlorine atoms, we find further improvements in the accuracy of calculated ³⁵Cl EFG tensor parameters when both a hybrid functional and spin–orbit effects are included in the SMC. On the contrary, for chlorine-containing organics, the inclusion of spin–orbit relativistic effects using a SMC does not improve the accuracy of computed ³⁵Cl EFG tensor parameters.