Dielectric Screening Meets Optimally Tuned Density Functionals

A short overview of recent attempts at merging two independently developed methods is presented. These are the optimal tuning of a range-separated hybrid (OT-RSH) functional, developed to provide an accurate first-principles description of the electronic structure and optical properties of gas-phase molecules, and the polarizable continuum model (PCM), developed to provide an approximate but computationally tractable description of a solvent in terms of an effective dielectric medium. After a brief overview of the OT-RSH approach, its combination with the PCM as a potentially accurate yet low-cost approach to the study of molecular assemblies and solids, particularly in the context of photocatalysis and photovoltaics, is discussed. First, solvated molecules are considered, with an emphasis on the challenge of balancing eigenvalue and total energy trends. Then, it is shown that the same merging of methods can also be used to study the electronic and optical properties of molecular solids, with a similar discussion of the pros and cons. Tuning of the effective scalar dielectric constant as one recent approach that mitigates some of the difficulties in merging the two approaches is considered.