Search

The use of Δ-self-consistent field (SCF) approaches for studying excited electronic states has received a renewed interest in recent years. In this work, the use of this scheme for calculating excited-state vibrational frequencies is examined. Results from Δ-SCF calculations for a set of representative molecules are compared with those obtained using configuration interaction with single substitutions (CIS) and time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) methods. The use of an approximate spin purification model is also considered for cases where the excited-state SCF solution is spin-contaminated. The results of this work demonstrate that an SCF-based description of an excited-state potential energy surface can be an accurate and cost-effective alternative to CIS and TD-DFT methods.

A practical ab initio composite method for modeling x-ray absorption and non-resonant x-ray emission is presented. Vertical K-edge excitation and emission energies are obtained from core-electron binding energies calculated with spin-projected ΔHF/ΔMP and outer-core ionization potentials/electron affinities calculated with electron propagator theory. An assessment of the combined methodologies against experiment is performed for a set of small molecules containing second-row elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Readily prepared cis-β-(α',α'-dimethyl)-4'-methindolylstyrenes undergo acid-catalyzed intramolecular hydroindolation to afford tetrahydrobenzo[ cd]indoles. Our experimental and computational investigations suggest that dispersive interactions between the indole and styrene preorganize substrates such that 6-membered ring formation is preferred, apparently via concerted protonation and C-C bond formation. When dispersion is attenuated (by a substituent or heteroatom), regioselectivity erodes and competing oligomerization predominates for cis substrates. Similarly, all trans-configured substrates that we evaluated failed to cyclize efficiently.

Readily prepared cis-β-(α’,α’-dimethyl)-4’-methindolylstyrenes undergo Brønsted acid-catalyzed intramolecular hydroarylation to afford a variety of 3-aryl-5,5-dimethyl-1,3,4,5-tetrahydrobenzo[cd]indoles. Our experimental and computational investigations suggest that dispersive interactions between the indole and styrene preorganize substrates such that 6-membered ring formation occurs via a concerted hydroarylation step. When dispersability is attenuated (by a substituent or heteroatom), regioselectivity erodes and competing oligomerization predominates for cis substrates; all trans-configured substrates that we evaluated failed to cyclize efficiently.

The strongest carborane acid, H(CHB11F11), protonates CO2 while traditional mixed Lewis/Brønsted superacids do not. The product is deduced from IR spectroscopy and calculation to be the proton disolvate, H(CO2)2(+). The carborane acid H(CHB11F11) is therefore the strongest known acid. The failure of traditional mixed superacids to protonate weak bases such as CO2 can be traced to a competition between the proton and the Lewis acid for the added base. The high protic acidity promised by large absolute values of the Hammett acidity function (H0) is not realized in practice because the basicity of an added base is suppressed by Lewis acid/base adduct formation.

Vertical core excitation energies are obtained using a combination of the ΔSCF method and the diagonal second-order self-energy approximation. These methods are applied to a set of neutral molecules and their anionic forms. An assessment of the results with the inclusion of relativistic effects is presented. For core excitations involving delocalized symmetry orbitals, the applied composite method improves upon the overestimation of ΔSCF by providing approximate values close to experimental K-shell transition energies. The importance of both correlation and relaxation contributions to the vertical core-excited state energies, the concept of local and nonlocal core orbitals, and the consequences of breaking symmetry are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The calculation of photoionization cross sections can play a key role in spectral assignments using modeling and simulation. In this work, we provide formal relationships between pole strengths, which are proportional to the photoionization cross section, and terms related to the natural ionization orbital model for ΔSCF calculations. A set of numerical calculations using the developed models is carried out. Pole strength values computed using the two approaches developed for ΔSCF calculations demonstrate excellent agreement with an electron propagator theory model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-resolution anion photoelectron spectroscopy of the ZrO3H2− and ZrO3D2− anions and complementary electronic structure calculations are used to investigate the reaction between zirconium dioxide and a single water molecule, ZrO20/− + H2O. Experimental spectra of ZrO3H2− and ZrO3D2− were obtained using slow photoelectron velocity-map imaging of cryogenically cooled anions, revealing the presence of two dissociative adduct conformers and yielding insight into the vibronic structure of the corresponding neutral species. Franck–Condon simulations for both the cis- and trans-dihydroxide structures are required to fully reproduce the experimental spectrum. Additionally, it was found that water-splitting is stabilized more by ZrO2 than TiO2, suggesting Zr-based catalysts are more reactive toward hydrolysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slow electron velocity-map imaging spectroscopy of cryogenically cooled TiO3H2− anions is used to probe the simplest titania/water reaction, TiO20/− + H2O. The resultant spectra show vibrationally resolved structure assigned to detachment from the cis-dihydroxide TiO(OH)2− geometry based on density functional theory calculations, demonstrating that for the reaction of the anionic TiO2− monomer with a single water molecule, the dissociative adduct (where the water is split) is energetically preferred over a molecularly adsorbed geometry. This work represents a significant improvement in resolution over previous measurements, yielding an electron affinity of 1.2529(4) eV as well as several vibrational frequencies for neutral TiO(OH)2. The energy resolution of the current results combined with photoelectron angular distributions reveals Herzberg-Teller coupling-induced transitions to Franck-Condon forbidden vibrational levels of the neutral ground state. A comparison to the previously measured spectrum of bare TiO2− indicates that reaction with water stabilizes neutral TiO2 more than the anion, providing insight into the fundamental chemical interactions between titania and water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts to reconcile simulated photoelectron spectra of MoVO4- clusters are complicated by the presence of very low energy barriers in the potential energy surfaces (PESs) of the lowest energy spin states and isomers. Transition state structures associated with the inversion of terminal oxygen ligands are found to lie below, or close to, the zero point energy of associated modes, which themselves are found to be of low frequency and thus likely to be significantly populated in the experimental characterization. Our simulations make use of Boltzmann averaging over low-energy coordinates and full mapping of the PES to obtain simulations in good agreement with experimental spectra. Furthermore, molecular orbital analysis of accessible final spin states reveals the existence of low energy two-electron transitions in which the final state is obtained from a finite excitation of an electron along with the main photodetachment event. Two-electron transitions are then used to justify the large difference in intensity between different bands present in the photoelectron spectrum. Owing to the general presence of terminal ligands in metal oxide clusters, this study identifies and proposes a solution to issues that are generally encountered when attempting to simulate transition metal cluster photoelectron spectroscopy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uranyl dihydroxide, UO2(OH)2, isomerization reaction energy barriers, including those occurring via proton shuttles are investigated using density functional theory. A relativistic effective core potential is employed to treat scalar-relativistic effects for uranium.

Maximum overlap methods are effective tools for optimizing challenging ground‐ and excited‐state wave functions using self‐consistent field models such as Hartree‐Fock and Kohn‐Sham density functional theory. Nevertheless, such models have shown significant sensitivity to the user‐defined initial guess of the target wave function. In this work, a projection operator framework is defined and used to provide a metric for non‐aufbau orbital selection in maximum‐overlap‐methods. The resulting algorithms, termed the Projection‐based Maximum Overlap Method (PMOM) and Projection‐based Initial Maximum Overlap Method (PIMOM), are shown to perform exceptionally well when using simple user‐defined target solutions based on occupied/virtual molecular orbital permutations. This work also presents a new metric that provides a simple and conceptually convenient measure of agreement between the desired target and the current or final SCF results during a calculation employing a maximum‐overlap method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A compact orbital representation of ionization processes is described utilizing the difference of calculated one-particle density matrices. Natural orbital analysis involving this difference density matrix simplifies interpretation of electronic detachment processes and allows differentiation between one-electron transitions and shake-up/shake-off transitions, in which one-electron processes are accompanied by excitation of a second electron into the virtual orbital space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of broken-symmetry electronic structure methods is required in order to obtain correct behavior of electronically strained open-shell systems, such as transition states, biradicals, and transition metals. This approach often has issues with spin contamination, which can lead to significant errors in predicted energies, geometries, and properties. Approximate projection schemes are able to correct for spin contamination and can often yield improved results. To fully make use of these methods and to carry out exploration of the potential energy surface, it is desirable to develop an efficient second energy derivative theory. In this paper, we formulate the analytical second derivatives for the Yamaguchi approximate projection scheme, building on recent work that has yielded an efficient implementation of the analytical first derivatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five-coordinate complexes of iron(III) and gallium(II) were obtained and characterized by crystallographic, electrochemical and electron paramagnetic resonance methods. The complexes showed enhanced formation of phenoxyl radicals and an improved reversibility of the ligand-centered redox processes was observed suggesting that unusual magnetic interaction between metal and radicals may take place.

A spin projected double-hybrid density functional theory is presented that accounts for different scaling of opposite and same spin terms in the second order correction. This method is applied to three dissociation reactions which in the unprojected formalism exhibit significant spin contamination with higher spin states. This gives rise to a distorted potential surface and can lead to poor geometries and energies. The projected method presented is shown to improve the description of the potential over unprojected double hybrid density functional theory. Comparison is made with the reference states of the two double hybrid functionals considered here (B2PLYP and mPW2PLYP) in which the projected potential surface is degraded by an imbalance in the description of dynamic and static correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate calculations of large systems remain a challenge in electronic structure theory. Hybrid energy techniques are a promising family of methods for treating such systems. Expanding on previous developments, we present a QM:QM electronic embedding model whereby the high-level region is polarized by the electron density of the low-level region within an ONIOM framework. A direct Coulomb embedding model as well a more computationally efficient model involving a density fitting expansion are considered. We also develop a generalized theory for the first derivatives of these classes of QM:QM electronic embedding schemes, which requires solution of a single set of self-consistent field response equations. Two initial test cases are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring potential energy surfaces of large molecular systems can be quite challenging due to the increased number of nuclear degrees of freedom. Many techniques that are well-suited for small and moderate size systems require diagonalization of the energy second-derivative matrix. Since the cost of this step scales as O(Natoms3) (where Natoms is the number of atomic centers), such methods quickly become infeasible and are eventually rendered cost prohibitive. In this work, the recently developed Euler-based predictor-corrector reaction path integration method [H. P. Hratchian, M. J. Frisch, and H. B. Schlegel, J. Chem. Phys. 133, 224101 (2010)] is enhanced and proposed as a useful alternative to conventional reaction path following schemes in studies on very large systems. Because this integrator does not require Hessian diagonalization, the O(Natoms3) bottleneck afflicting other approaches is completely avoided. The effectiveness of the integrator in large system studies is demonstrated with an enzyme-catalyzed reaction employing an ONIOM (QM:MM) model chemistry and involving 5368 atomic centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical treatment of chemical reactions inevitably includes the integration of reaction pathways. After reactant, transition structure, and product stationary points on the potential energy surface are located, steepest descent reaction path following provides a means for verifying reaction mechanisms. Accurately integrated paths are also needed when evaluating reaction rates using variational transition state theory or reaction path Hamiltonian models. In this work an Euler-based predictor-corrector integrator is presented and tested using one analytic model surface and five chemical reactions. The use of Hessian updating, as a means for reducing the overall computational cost of the reaction path calculation, is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we report a new quantum mechanical:quantum mechanical (QM:QM) method which provides explicit electronic polarization of the high-level region by using the Löwdin atomic charges from the low-level region. This provides an embedding potential which naturally evolves with changes in nuclear geometry. However, this coupling of the high-level and low-level regions introduces complications in the energy gradient evaluation. Following previous work, we derive and implement efficient gradients where a single set of self-consistent field response equations is solved. We provide results for the calculation of deprotonation energies of a hydroxylated spherosiloxane cluster (Si8O12H7OH) and the dissociation energy of a water molecule from a [ZnIm3(H2O)]2+ complex. We find that the Löwdin charge embedding model provides results which are not only an improvement over mechanical embedding (no electronic embedding) but which are also resistant to large overpolarization effects which occur more often with Mulliken charge embedding. Finally, a scaled-Löwdin charge embedding method is also presented which provides a method for fine tuning the extent of electronic polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid QM:QM (quantum mechanics:quantum mechanics) and QM:MM (quantum mechanics:molecular mechanics) methods are widely used to calculate the electronic structure of large systems where a full quantum mechanical treatment at a desired high level of theory is computationally prohibitive. The ONIOM (our own N-layer integrated molecular orbital molecular mechanics) approximation is one of the more popular hybrid methods, where the total molecular system is divided into multiple layers, each treated at a different level of theory. In a previous publication, we developed a novel QM:QM electronic embedding scheme within the ONIOM framework, where the model system is embedded in the external Mulliken point charges of the surrounding low-level region to account for the polarization of the model system wave function. Therein, we derived and implemented a rigorous expression for the embedding energy as well as analytic gradients that depend on the derivatives of the external Mulliken point charges. In this work, we demonstrate the applicability of our QM:QM method with point charge embedding and assess its accuracy. We study two challenging systems—zinc metalloenzymes and silicon oxide cages—and demonstrate that electronic embedding shows significant improvement over mechanical embedding. We also develop a modified technique for the energy and analytic gradients using a generalized asymmetric Mulliken embedding method involving an unequal splitting of the Mulliken overlap populations to offer improvement in situations where the Mulliken charges may be deficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]