Abstract
Intermolecular interaction energy decompositions using the Constrained Space Orbital Variation (CSOV) method are carried out at the Hartree–Fock level on the one hand and using DFT with usual GGA functionals on the other for a number of model complexes to analyze the role of electron correlation in the intermolecular stabilization energy. In addition to the overall stabilization, the results provide information on the variation, with respect to the computational level, of the different contributions to the interaction energy. The complexes studied are the water linear dimer, the N‐methylformamide dimer, the nucleic acid base pairs, the benzene–methane and benzene‐N~2~ van der Waals complexes, [Cu^+^‐(ImH)~3~]~2~, where “ImH” stands for the Imidazole ligand, and ImH‐Zn^++^. The variation of the frozen core energy (the sum of the intermolecular electrostatic energy and the Pauli repulsion energy) calculated from the unperturbed orbitals of the interacting entities indicates that the intramolecular correlation contributions can be stabilizing as well as destabilizing, and that general trends can be derived from the results obtained using usual density functionals. The most important difference between the values obtained from HF and DFT computations concerns the charge transfer contribution, which, in most cases, undergoes the largest increase. The physical meaning of these results is discussed. The present work gives reference calculations that might be used to parametrize new correlated molecular mechanics potentials. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 26: 1052–1062, 2005