Electronic structure of SF6

Abstract
We have performed self-consistent calculations for the SF6 molecule in the local density approximation to density functional theory. The minimum energy was calculated to occur at an S–F distance of 1.584 Å. The binding energy was found to be 25.06 eV. Convergent ionization potentials were obtained by a series of transition state calculations with different sizes of basis sets. The electron affinity was determined to be 1.19 eV by calculating the energy of SF−6 as a function of internuclear distance. Some excitation energies were also calculated.