Ab initiotheory of magnetic interactions at surfaces

The low to high spin energy transition of Ni adsorbed on regular and defective sites of MgO(100) and the relative strengths of bulk and surface magnetic coupling constants of first row transition metal oxides (MnO, FeO, CoO, NiO and CuO) are taken as examples to illustrate some deficiencies of density functional theory (DFT). For these ionic systems a cluster/periodic comparison within the same computational method (either DFT or Hartree-Fock) is used to establish that embedded cluster models provide an adequate representation. The cluster model approach is then used to obtain accurate values for the magnetic properties of interest by using explicitly correlated wavefunction methods which handle the electronic open shell rigorously as spin eigenfunctions.