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A quantum mechanically based procedure for estimation of crystal densities of neutral and ionic crystals is presented. In this method, volumes within 0.001 electrons/bohr3 isosurfaces of electron density for the constituent isolated neutral and ionic molecules are calculated to define the molecular volume or formula unit volumes used in predicting the crystal density. The B3LYP density functional theory in conjunction with the 6-31G** basis set were employed to generate the electron densities. The suitability of this method of crystal density prediction was assessed by subjecting a large number (289) of molecular and ionic crystals to the procedure and comparing results with experimental information. The results indicate that, for neutral molecular crystals, the root-mean-square (rms) deviation from experiment is within 4%, whereas the rms deviation is somewhat larger for the 71 ionic crystals evaluated (within 5%).
Rice et al. (Mon,) studied this question.