Neutral, Anionic, and Cationic Manganese Dimers through Density Functional Theory

The manganese dimer is the only first row transition metal dimer that presents an antiferromagnetic (1)Sigma(+)(g) ground state bonded by a van der Waals interaction. The various density functional theory (DFT) investigations devoted to the study of the ground state of this molecule and of its anionic and cationic states, are usually based on the generalized gradient approximation, giving results which contradict the experimental observations. In this work, we describe the overall spectroscopic properties of the neutral, cationic and anionic manganese dimers with DFT, focusing on understanding the effects of the percentage of Hartree-Fock exchange and of the different exchange-correlation functionals, on the relative stability of the various potential energy curves. For each of the three species we classify the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic states, studying the vertical detachment energies, the ionization energies and the electron affinities. In this way, we locate a hybrid exchange-correlation functional able to give for all the three species, results comparable with the experimental measurements and with previous accurate multiconfigurational calculations, defining a more accurate density functional theory approach to study larger charged or neutral manganese clusters.