The Semiexperimental Approach at Work: Equilibrium Structure of Radical Species

The so-called semiexperimental (SE) approach is a powerful technique for obtaining highly accurate equilibrium structures for isolated systems. This Featured Article describes its extension to open-shell species, thus providing the first systematic investigation on radical equilibrium geometries to be used for benchmarking purposes. The small yet significant database obtained demonstrates that there is no reduction in accuracy when moving from closed-shell species to radicals. We also provide an extension of the applicability of the SE approach to medium-/large-sized radicals by exploiting the so-called “Lego-brick” approach, which is based on the assumption that a molecular system can be seen as formed by smaller fragments for which the SE equilibrium structure is available. In this Featured Article we show that this model can be successfully applied also to open-shell species.