TAO-DFT investigation of electronic properties of linear and cyclic carbon chains

It has been challenging to adequately investigate the properties of nanosystems with radical nature using conventional electronic structure methods. We address this challenge by calculating the electronic properties of linear carbon chains (l-CC[n]) and cyclic carbon chains (c-CC[n]) with n = 10–100 carbon atoms, using thermally-assisted-occupation density functional theory (TAO-DFT). For all the cases investigated, l-CC[n]/c-CC[n] are ground-state singlets, and c-CC[n] are energetically more stable than l-CC[n]. The electronic properties of l-CC[n]/c-CC[n] reveal certain oscillation patterns for smaller n, followed by monotonic changes for larger n. For the smaller carbon chains, odd-numbered l-CC[n] are more stable than the adjacent even-numbered ones; c-CC[[Formula: see text] ]/c-CC[4m] are more/less stable than the adjacent odd-numbered ones, where m are positive integers. As n increases, l-CC[n]/c-CC[n] possess increasing polyradical nature in their ground states, where the active orbitals are delocalized over the entire length of l-CC[n] or the whole circumference of c-CC[n].