  Density functionals with asymptotic corrections to the long-range potential
provide entry-level methods for calculations on molecules that can sustain
charge transfer, but similar applications in Materials Science are rare. We
describe an implementation of the CAM-B3LYP range-separated functional within
the Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package (VASP) framework, together with its
analytical functional derivatives. Results obtained for eight representative
materials: aluminum, diamond, graphene, silicon, NaCl, MgO, 2D h-BN and 3D
h-BN, indicate that CAM-B3LYP predictions embody mean-absolute deviations (MAD)
compared to HSE06 that are reduced by a factor of 6 for lattice parameters, 4
for quasiparticle band gaps, 3 for the lowest optical excitation energies, and
6 for exciton binding energies. Further, CAM-B3LYP appears competitive compared
to ab initio G0W0 and Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) approaches. The CAM-B3LYP
implementation in VASP was verified by comparison of optimized geometries and
reaction energies for isolated molecules taken from the ACCDB database,
evaluated in large periodic unit cells, to analogous results obtained using
Gaussian basis sets. Using standard GW pseudopotentials and energy cutoffs for
the plane-wave calculations and the aug-cc-pV5Z basis set for the atomic-basis
ones, the MAD in energy for 1738 chemical reactions was 0.34 kcal mol-1, whilst
for 480 unique bond lengths this was 0.0036 {\AA}; these values reduced to 0.28
kcal mol-1 (largest error 0.94 kcal mol-1) and 0.0009 {\AA} by increasing the
plane-wave cuttoff energy to 850 eV.
