Influence of connector groups on the interactions of substituents with carbon-centered radicals.

High-level G3X(MP2)-RAD calculations have been carried out to examine the effect of interposing a "connector" group (W) on the interaction between a substituent (X) and the radical center in carbon-centered radicals ((•)CH(2)-W-X). The connector groups include -CH(2)-, -CH═CH-, -C≡C-, -p-C(6)H(4)-, -m-C(6)H(4)-, and -o-C(6)H(4)-, and the substituents include H, CF(3), CH(3), CH═O, NH(2), and CH═CH(2). Analysis of the results is facilitated by introducing two new quantities termed radical connector energies and molecule connector energies. We find that the -CH(2)- connector effectively turns off π-electron effects but allows the transmission of σ-electron effects, albeit at a reduced level. The effect of a substituent X attached to the -CH═CH- and -C≡C- connector groups is to represent a perturbation of the effect of the connector groups themselves (i.e., CH═CH(2) and C≡CH).

Spectroscopy and thermochemistry of a jet-cooled open-shell polyene: 1,4-pentadienyl radical.

The 1,4-pentadienyl (vinylallyl) radical has been observed for the first time by optical spectroscopy. An excitation spectrum is recorded on m/z 67 by resonant two-color two-photon ionization spectroscopy. Several bands are observed with the origin transition identified at 19 449 cm(-1). The spectrum is assigned by a comparison with ab initio frequencies calculated at the CASPT2/cc-pVTZ level of theory, with an accompanying Franck-Condon calculation of the excitation spectrum, including Dushinsky mixing. The b(1) and a(2) outer C-C bond torsional modes are calculated to halve in frequency upon electronic excitation, bringing about their appearance in the excitation spectrum. This can be readily understood by considering the torsional sensitivity of the frontier molecular orbital energies. High-level quantum chemical calculations of the radical stabilization energy, resulting in a value of nearly 120 kJ mol(-1), provide quantitative confirmation that this radical is highly stabilized.

Effect of substituents on the stabilities of multiply-substituted carbon-centered radicals.

The bond dissociation energies (BDEs) and radical stabilization energies (RSEs) which result from 166 reactions that lead to carbon-centered radicals of the type ˙CH(2)X, ˙CHXY and ˙CXYZ, where X, Y and Z are any of the fourteen substituents H, F, Cl, NH(2), OH, SH, CH[double bond, length as m-dash]CH(2), C[triple bond, length as m-dash]CH, BH(2), CHO, COOH, CN, CH(3), and CF(3), were calculated using spin-restricted and -unrestricted variants of the double-hybrid B2-PLYP method with the 6-311+G(3df,2p) basis set. The interactions of substituents X, Y, and Z in both the radicals (˙CXYZ) and in the precursor closed-shell molecules (CHXYZ), as well as the extent of additivity of such interactions, were investigated by calculating radical interaction energies (RIEs), molecule interaction energies (MIEs), and deviations from additivity of RSEs (DARSEs) for a set of 152 reactions that lead to di- (˙CHXY) and tri- (˙CXYZ) substituted carbon-centered radicals. The pairwise quantities describing the effects of pairs of substituents in trisubstituted systems, namely pairwise MIEs (PMIEs), pairwise RIEs (PRIEs) and deviations from pairwise additivity of RSEs (DPARSEs), were also calculated for the set of 61 reactions that lead to trisubstituted radicals (˙CXYZ). Both ROB2-PLYP and UB2-PLYP were found to perform quite well in predicting the quantities related to the stabilities of carbon-centered radicals when compared with available experimental data and with the results obtained from the high-level composite method G3X(MP2)-RAD. Particular selections of substituents or combinations of substituents from the current test set were found to lead to specially stable radicals, increasing the RSEs to a maximum of +68.2 kJ mol(-1) for monosubstituted radicals ˙CH(2)X (X = CH[double bond, length as m-dash]CH(2)), +131.7 kJ mol(-1) for disubstituted radicals ˙CHXY (X = NH(2), Y = CHO), and +177.1 kJ mol(-1) for trisubstituted radicals ˙CXYZ (X = NH2, Y = Z = CHO).

Optimization and basis-set dependence of a restricted-open-shell form of B2-PLYP double-hybrid density functional theory.

The performance of the restricted-open-shell form of the double-hybrid density functional theory (DHDFT) B2-PLYP procedure has been compared with that of its unrestricted counterpart using the G3/05 test set. Additionally, the influence of basis set on the parametrization and performance of ROB2-PLYP, and the further improvement of ROB2-PLYP through augmentation with a long-range dispersion function, have been investigated. We find that, after optimization of the two empirical DHDFT parameters, the ROB2-PLYP method (HF exchange = 59% and MP2 correlation = 28%) performs slightly better than the corresponding UB2-PLYP method (HF exchange = 62% and MP2 correlation = 35%), with mean absolute deviations (MADs) from the experimental energies in the G3/05 test set of 9.1 and 9.9 kJ mol(-1), respectively, when the cc-pVQZ basis set is employed. Separate optimizations of the parameters for the RO and U procedures are crucial for a fair comparison. For example, for the G2/97 test set, ROB2-PLYP(53,27) and ROB2-PLYP(62,35) show MADs of 12.2 and 13.5 kJ mol(-1), respectively, compared with the 6.6 kJ mol(-1) for (the optimized) ROB2-PLYP(59,28). The performance of ROB2-PLYP deteriorates significantly as the basis-set size is decreased, reflecting the enhanced basis-set dependence of the MP2 contribution compared with standard DFT. We find that this deficiency can be partly overcome through reparametrization. However, when the basis set drops below triple-zeta, the improvements made on reoptimizing the ROB2-PLYP parameters are not sufficient to warrant their general use. We find that the dispersion- and BSSE-corrected ROB2-PLYP(59,28)-D HCP procedure performs significantly better than ROB2-PLYP(59,28) for the S22 test set of interaction energies in which dispersion interactions are particularly important, with the MAD falling from 6.1 to 1.6 kJ mol(-1). However, when the same D correction is applied to the G3/05 test set, the performance of ROB2-PLYP(59,28)-D deteriorates slightly compared with ROB2-PLYP(59,28), with the MAD increasing from 9.1 to 9.5 kJ mol(-1).

Consequences of spin contamination in unrestricted calculations on open-shell species: effect of Hartree-Fock and Møller-Plesset contributions in hybrid and double-hybrid density functional theory approaches.

The extent of spin contamination in unrestricted versions of pure, hybrid and double-hybrid density functional theory (DFT) methods, and its consequences, as manifested in the difference between unrestricted and restricted energies (U - R), has been investigated for 22 homolytic bond dissociation reactions. In accordance with previous studies, increasing the amount of Hartree-Fock (HF) exchange in unrestricted hybrid DFT procedures leads to an increase in the extent of spin contamination. However, in unrestricted double-hybrid DFT procedures, which include both a proportion of HF exchange and a perturbative correlation contribution (MP2), the opposing behavior of UHF and UMP2 with respect to spin contamination leads to smaller differences between the energies predicted by unrestricted and restricted variants. For example, for the most spin-contaminated radicals, a 30-100 kJ mol(-1) |U - R| difference at the HF and MP2 levels is reduced to just 0-5 kJ mol(-1) with the double-hybrid functionals. The double-hybrid UDFT procedures can thus benefit from the inclusion of UHF and UMP2 contributions without incurring to the same extent the problems associated with spin contamination.

Bond dissociation energies and radical stabilization energies: an assessment of contemporary theoretical procedures.

Various contemporary theoretical procedures have been tested for their accuracy in predicting the bond dissociation energies (BDEs) and the radical stabilization energies (RSEs) for a test set of 22 monosubstituted methyl radicals. The procedures considered include the high-level W1, W1', CBS-QB3, ROCBS-QB3, G3(MP2)-RAD, and G3X(MP2)-RAD methods, unrestricted and restricted versions of the double-hybrid density functional theory (DFT) procedures B2-PLYP and MPW2-PLYP, and unrestricted and restricted versions of the hybrid DFT procedures BMK and MPWB1K, as well as the unrestricted DFT procedures UM05 and UM05-2X. The high-level composite procedures show very good agreement with experiment and are used to evaluate the performance of the comparatively less expensive DFT procedures. RMPWB1K and both RBMK and UBMK give very promising results for absolute BDEs, while additionally restricted and unrestricted X2-PLYP methods and UM05-2X give excellent RSE values. UM05, UB2-PLYP, UMPW2-PLYP, UM05-2X, and UMPWB1K are among the less well performing methods for BDEs, while UMPWB1K and UM05 perform less well for RSEs. The high-level theoretical results are used to recommend alternative experimental BDEs for propyne, acetaldehyde, and acetic acid.