Adjustment of Perdew-Wang exchange functional for describing van der Waals and DNA base-stacking interactions

In order to accurately describe the van der Waals interaction between rare-gas atoms by the density functional theory, we adjusted the exchange-functional developed by Perdew and Wang (PW). The van der Waals interactions of He, Ne, Ar and Kr dimers were investigated. The results clarified that the adjustment improves the overestimation of the interactions by the original PW exchange-functional, providing the qualitatively accurate trend in van der Waals interactions of He, Ne, Ar and Kr dimers. However, we also found that the adjusted functional for He and Ne underestimates the DNA base-stacking interaction between cytosine monomers. This may indicate that the PW exchange-functional requires a further modification or a van der Waals correction in order to give accurate DNA base-stacking interaction. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.