Binding energies, molecular structures, and vibrational frequencies of transition metal carbonyls using density functional theory with gradient corrections

The performance of the density functional theory (DFT) methods with different gradient corrections as an approach for the computation of transition metal complexes has been evaluated. As a test, the structures, binding energies, and vibrational frequencies of a series of binary transition metal carbonyl complexes were calculated. Comparison with previous studies shows that the gradient correction significantly improves the performance of the DFT schemes, and that the results obtained generally match the quality of the data obtained from coupled cluster and pair functional methods.