Vibrational anharmonic calculations in solution: Performance of various DFT approaches

We report anharmonic spectra calculated for formaldehyde in acetonitrile solution using the quartic force field obtained for various DFT/solvent coupled models. A statistical study has been carried out for each mode by using several classes of DFT functionals and comparing them to the reference ab-initio CCSD(T)/cc-pVQZ calculations. Results lead to the recommended use of hybrid functionals associated with the 6-31+G** basis set and the Polarized Continuum model (PCM) to predict the expected shifts relative to the gas phase. (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.