Search

31P nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) chemical shifts were shown to be very sensitive to the basis set used at the geometry optimization stage. Commonly used energy-optimized basis sets for a phosphorus atom containing only one polarization d-function were shown to be unable to provide correct equilibrium geometries for the calculations of phosphorus chemical shifts. The use of basis sets with at least two polarization d-functions on a phosphorus atom is strongly recommended. In this paper, an idea of creating the basis sets purposed for the geometry optimization that provide the least possible error coming from the geometry factor of accuracy in the resultant NMR shielding constants is proposed. The property-energy consisted algorithm with the target function in the form of the molecular energy gradient relative to P-P bond lengths was applied to create new geometry-oriented pecG-n (n = 1, 2) basis sets for a phosphorus atom. New basis sets have demonstrated by far superior performance as compared to the other commonly used energy-optimized basis sets in massive calculations of 31P NMR chemical shifts carried out at the gauge-including atomic orbital-coupled cluster singles and doubles/pecS-2 level of the theory by taking into account solvent, vibrational, and relativistic corrections., (© 2024 Author(s). Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.)

This paper demonstrates the performance of our previously suggested property-energy consistent method on the example of the generation of effective basis sets, pecS-1 and pecS-2, suited for the calculation of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen chemical shifts. The new basis sets were successfully approbated in the GIAO-DFT calculations of the chemical shifts of 35 molecules using six different functionals. The pecS-1 basis set demonstrated very good accuracy, which makes this small basis set an effective means for the large-scale computations. At the same time, the pecS-2 basis set also gave very accurate results, thus putting it on a par with the other commensurate basis sets suited for the chemical shifts calculations.

A new polarization propagator approach to indirect nuclear spin-spin coupling constantans is formulated within the framework of the algebraic-diagrammatic construction (ADC) approximation and implemented at the level of the strict second-order approximation scheme, ADC(2). The ADC approach possesses transparent computational procedure operating with Hermitian matrix quantities defined with respect to physical excitations. It is size-consistent and easily extendable to higher orders via the hierarchy of available ADC approximation schemes. The ADC(2) method is tested in the first applications to HF, N(2), CO, H(2)O, HCN, NH(3), CH(4), C(2)H(2), PH(3), SiH(4), CH(3)F, and C(2)H(4). The calculated indirect nuclear spin-spin coupling constants are in good agreement with the experimental data and results of the second-order polarization propagator approximation method. The computational effort of the ADC(2) scheme scales as n(5) with respect to the number of molecular orbitals n, which makes this method promising for applications to larger molecules.