Surface energy of transition metals

Nonempirical GGA functionals satisfy the uniform density limit. In addition, they satisfy several known, exact properties of the exchange-correlation hole. Two widely used nonempirical functionals that satisfy these properties are the Perdew-Wang 91 (PW91) functional and the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional. Because GGA functionals include more physical ingredients than the LDA functional, it is often assumed that nonempirical GGA functionals should be more accurate than the LDA. This is quite often true, but there are exceptions. One example is in the calculation of the surface energy of transition metals and oxides. 

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