Geometry of intramolecular silicon complexes: an ab initio estimation of the sensitivity to the effect of medium. (Aroyloxymethyl)trifluorosilanes

The effect of medium on the geometry of the (benzoyloxymethyl)trifluorosilane (1) molecule was studied by the HF and MP2 methods with the 6-31G(d), 6-311G(d), and 6-311+G(d,p) basis sets, as well as using the Onsager SCRF model, the PCM approach, and the data of X-ray diffraction study. Molecule 1 has a low complexation energy (5.4 kcal mol^–1 according to MP2(Full)/6-31G(d)+ZPE calculations and 6.8 kcal mol^–1 according to IR spectroscopy data), while its geometric parameters are the least sensitive to the effects of medium among all hypervalent silicon compounds studied to date. Nevertheless, the results obtained revealed a pronounced deformation of the SiO coordination bond in 1 on going from the gas phase to the polar solution and crystal. This serves as a theoretical substantiation of the hypothesis that substantial changes in the IR and NMR spectral characteristics of the (O—Si)-chelate (aroyloxymethyl)trifluorosilanes upon variation of external factors are due to geometric reasons. Analysis of the electron density distribution according to Bader indicates that the SiO bond in molecule 1 can be treated as a covalent bond of high polarity.     

The ground state of MoCr(O2CH)4 at theab initio SCF and CI levels. A symmetry adapted RHF energy functional with an artificial double minimum

Ab initio restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF) calculations carried out on the ground state of MoCr(O₂CH)₄ lead to two distinct energy minima according to the initial guess made for the set of trial vectors. It is shown that these two symmetry-adapted wavefunctions can be correlated with a twofold degenerate broken-symmetry solution previously characterized for the related system of higher symmetry Cr₂(O₂CH)₄. Complete CI expansions have been carried out from either RHF polarized wavefunction using as a basis the set of eight frontier MO's with high metal character. These expansions yield poorly resymmetrized wavefunctions. A similar CI expansion has finally been carried out from a wavefunction resymmetrized at the SCF level and corresponding to a saddle point of the RHF energy hypersurface. The total energy associated with this latter expansion is the lowest obtained in the present work. The natural orbital analysis corresponds to ()^1.86()^3.58()^1.54()^0.46()^0.42 (^*)^0.14 and shows that this resymmetrized CI expansion is in many respects similar to the correlated wavefunctions obtained for the homobinuclear parent systems.