Electric field effects on the shielding constants of noble gases: a four-component relativistic Hartree-Fock study

Second derivatives of nuclear shielding constants with respect to an electric field, i.e., shielding polarizabilities, have been calculated for the noble gas atoms from helium to xenon. The calculations have been carried out using the four-component relativistic Hartree-Fock method. In order to assess the importance of the individual relativistic corrections, the shielding polarizabilities have also been calculated at the nonrelativistic Hartree-Fock level, with spin-orbit and scalar (Darwin and mass-velocity) effects having been established by perturbative methods. Electron correlation effects have been estimated using the second-order polarization propagator approach. The relativistic effects on the tensor components of the shielding polarizabilities are found to be larger and changing less regularly with the atomic number than for the shielding constant itself. However, there is a partial cancellation of the contributions to the parallel and perpendicular components of the shielding polarizability and as a consequence the mean shielding polarizability is far less affected than the individual components.     

Leading-order relativistic effects on nuclear magnetic resonance shielding tensors

We present perturbational ab initio calculations of the nuclear-spin-dependent relativistic corrections to the nuclear magnetic resonance shielding tensors that constitute, together with the other relativistic terms reported by us earlier, the full leading-order perturbational set of results for the one-electron relativistic contributions to this observable, based on the (Breit-)Pauli Hamiltonian. These contributions are considered for the H(2)X (X = O,S,Se,Te,Po) and HX (X = F,Cl,Br,I,At) molecules, as well as the noble gas (Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, Rn) atoms. The corrections are evaluated using the relativistic and magnetic operators as perturbations on an equal footing, calculated using analytical linear and quadratic response theory applied on top of a nonrelativistic reference state provided by self-consistent field calculations. The (1)H and heavy-atom nuclear magnetic shielding tensors are compared with four component, nearly basis-set-limit Dirac-Hartree-Fock calculations that include positronic excitations, as well as available literature data. Besides the easy interpretability of the different contributions in terms of familiar nonrelativistic concepts, the accuracy of the present perturbational scheme is striking for the isotropic part of the shielding tensor, for systems including elements up to Xe.     

Four-component relativistic theory for nuclear magnetic shielding constants: the orbital decomposition approach

The authors present a scheme to simplify four-component relativistic calculations of nuclear magnetic shielding constants. The central idea is to decompose each first order orbital into two terms, one is magnetically balanced and directly leads to the diamagnetic term, and the other is, to leading order of relativity, kinetically balanced and can therefore simply be represented in the basis of unperturbed positive energy states. As a matrix formulation, the present approach is far simpler than other operator theories. Combined with the Dirac-Kohn-Sham ansatz, the nuclear magnetic shielding constants for the Kr, Xe, and Rn atoms as well as the HBr and HI molecules are calculated, and the results compare favorably with those of other schemes.     

Four-component relativistic theory for nuclear magnetic shielding constants: critical assessments of different approaches

Both formal and numerical analyses have been carried out on various exact and approximate variants of the four-component relativistic theory for nuclear magnetic shielding constants. These include the standard linear response theory (LRT), the full or external field-dependent unitary transformations of the Dirac operator, as well as the orbital decomposition approach. In contrast with LRT, the latter schemes take explicitly into account both the kinetic and magnetic balances between the large and small components of the Dirac spinors, and are therefore much less demanding on the basis sets. In addition, the diamagnetic contributions, which are otherwise "missing" in LRT, appear naturally in the latter schemes. Nevertheless, the definitions of paramagnetic and diamagnetic terms are not the same in the different schemes, but the difference is only of O(c(-2)) and thus vanishes in the nonrelativistic limit. It is shown that, as an operator theory, the full field-dependent unitary transformation approach cannot be applied to singular magnetic fields such as that due to the magnetic point dipole moment of a nucleus. However, the inherent singularities can be avoided by the corresponding matrix formulation (with a partial closed summation). All the schemes are combined with the Dirac-Kohn-Sham ansatz for ground state calculations, and by using virtually complete basis sets a new and more accurate set of absolute nuclear magnetic resonance shielding scales for the rare gases He-Rn have been established.     

Investigation of the counterpoise contribution to the variation of nuclear magnetic shielding constants with intermolecular interaction

The contribution of basis-set extension to the calculated chemical-shift variation due to intermolecular interaction is investigated for water and methane dimers and for the water—proton system. The results show that for protons the error due to the finite size of the basis set is small enough to be neglected; however, it can be of measurable magnitude for the nuclei of non-hydrogen atoms. Therefore, the counterpoise correction should be taken into account. The variation of this correction with the basis set is examined in the case of the water dimer.     

Density-functional calculations of relativistic spin-orbit effects on nuclear magnetic shielding in paramagnetic molecules

Terms arising from the relativistic spin-orbit effect on both hyperfine and Zeeman interactions are introduced to density-functional theory calculation of nuclear magnetic shielding in paramagnetic molecules. The theory is a generalization of the former nonrelativistic formulation for doublet systems and is consistent to O(alpha4), the fourth power of the fine structure constant, for the spin-orbit terms. The new temperature-dependent terms arise from the deviation of the electronic g tensor from the free-electron g value as well as spin-orbit corrections to hyperfine coupling tensor A, the latter introduced in the present work. In particular, the new contributions include a redefined isotropic pseudocontact contribution that consists of effects due to both the g tensor and spin-orbit corrections to hyperfine coupling. The implementation of the spin-orbit terms makes use of all-electron atomic mean-field operators and/or spin-orbit pseudopotentials. Sample results are given for group-9 metallocenes and a nitroxide radical. The new O(alpha4) corrections are found significant for the metallocene systems while they obtain small values for the nitroxide radical. For the isotropic shifts, none of the three beyond-leading-order hyperfine contributions are negligible.     

Effect of perturbation of the atomic basis on nuclear magnetic shielding constants for small molecules

We have calculated the components of the paramagnetic part of the magnetic shielding tensor for nuclei in molecules of LiH, HF, and H₂O within the uncoupled variant of Hartree-Fock-Roothaan perturbation theory, taking into account the dependence of the original basis set of Slater-type AO's (STO's) on the perturbation parameter. We have shown that it is necessary to take into account such a dependence when calculating the components of the magnetic shielding tensor in minimal basis sets of STO's. We have carried out a comparative analysis of the data obtained with results of other approaches.Translated from Teoreticheskaya i Éksperimental'naya Khimiya, Vol. 24, No. 5, pp. 527–532, September–October, 1988     

Dipolar contributions to nuclear magnetic shielding by anisotropic molecules

Simple analytical expressions are given for the dipolar contributions to isotropic magnetic shielding outside axially-symmetric molecules. Except for certain paramagnetic metal-ion complexes the new expressions for the shielding expanded in spheroidal harmonics are preferable to the McConnell formula.     

Quasirelativistic study of 125Te nuclear magnetic shielding constants and chemical shifts

Calculations for ¹²⁵Te magnetic shielding constants and chemical shifts were carried out using a quasirelativistic Hamiltonian including the spin‐free relativistic, one‐ and two‐electron spin–orbit, and relativistic magnetic interaction terms. For the tellurium‐containing series Te(CH₃)₂, TeH₂, TeF₆, Te(CH₃)₄, and Te(CH₃)₂Cl₂, the relativistic effects amounted to as much as 1300 ppm and were very important for qualitatively reproducing the absolute value of the ¹²⁵Te shielding constants obtained experimentally. On the other hand, for the ¹²⁵Te chemical shifts the relativistic effects were less important, because they cancelled each other between the sample and reference compounds. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Comput Chem 22: 1502–1508, 2001     

Nuclear magnetic resonance shielding constants and chemical shifts in linear 199Hg compounds: a comparison of three relativistic computational methods

We investigate the importance of relativistic effects on NMR shielding constants and chemical shifts of linear HgL(2) (L = Cl, Br, I, CH(3)) compounds using three different relativistic methods: the fully relativistic four-component approach and the two-component approximations, linear response elimination of small component (LR-ESC) and zeroth-order regular approximation (ZORA). LR-ESC reproduces successfully the four-component results for the C shielding constant in Hg(CH(3))(2) within 6 ppm, but fails to reproduce the Hg shielding constants and chemical shifts. The latter is mainly due to an underestimation of the change in spin-orbit contribution. Even though ZORA underestimates the absolute Hg NMR shielding constants by ～2100 ppm, the differences between Hg chemical shift values obtained using ZORA and the four-component approach without spin-density contribution to the exchange-correlation (XC) kernel are less than 60 ppm for all compounds using three different functionals, BP86, B3LYP, and PBE0. However, larger deviations (up to 366 ppm) occur for Hg chemical shifts in HgBr(2) and HgI(2) when ZORA results are compared with four-component calculations with non-collinear spin-density contribution to the XC kernel. For the ZORA calculations it is necessary to use large basis sets (QZ4P) and the TZ2P basis set may give errors of ～500 ppm for the Hg chemical shifts, despite deceivingly good agreement with experimental data. A Gaussian nucleus model for the Coulomb potential reduces the Hg shielding constants by ～100-500 ppm and the Hg chemical shifts by 1-143 ppm compared to the point nucleus model depending on the atomic number Z of the coordinating atom and the level of theory. The effect on the shielding constants of the lighter nuclei (C, Cl, Br, I) is, however, negligible.     

Systematic studies on the computation of nuclear magnetic resonance shielding constants and chemical shifts: the density functional models

We present a systematic density functional investigation on the prediction of the 13C, 15N, 17O, and 19F NMR properties of 23 molecules with 21 density functionals. Extensive comparisons are made for both 13C magnetic shieldings and chemical shifts with respect to the gas phase experimental data and the best CCSD(T) results. We find that the OPBE and OPW91 exchange-correlation functionals perform significantly better than some popular functionals such as B3LYP and PBE1PBE, even surpassing, in many cases, the standard wavefunction-based method MP2. Further analysis has been performed to explore the individual role played by various exchange and correlation functionals. We find that the B88 and PBE exchange functionals have a too strong tendency of deshielding, leading to too deshielded magnetic shielding constants; whereas the OPTX exchange functional performs remarkably well. We claim that the main source of error arises from the exchange functional, but correlation functional also makes important contribution. We find that the correlation functionals may be grouped into two classes. class A, such as LYP and B98, leads to deshielded NMR values, deteriorating the overall performance; whereas class B, such as PW91 and PBE, generally increases the absolute shieldings, which complements the exchange functionals, leading to improved results in the calculation of NMR data.     

Improved description of nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shielding constants using the M06-L meta-generalized-gradient-approximation density functional

The performance of the M06-L density functional has been tested for four databases of NMR isotropic chemical shielding constants. Comparison with the B3LYP, BLYP, HCTH, KT1, KT2, LSDA, OPBE, OLYP, PBE, TPSS, and VSXC functionals shows that M06-L has improved performance for calculating NMR chemical shielding constants, especially for highly correlated systems. We also found that VSXC and M06-L have encouraging accuracy for calculating (13)C chemical shielding constants, and both functionals perform very well for the chemical shielding constants in the o-benzyne molecule.     

Calculations of the magnetic shielding constants of heavy nuclei in polyatomic molecules

Coupled Hartree-Fock perturbation theory has been applied to compute the nuclear magnetic shielding tensors for ¹⁷O, ¹⁴N, and ¹³C in the molecules of water, ammonia, and methane with four wave functions of increasing accuracy, expanded over basis sets of Gaussian functions. The agreement with the experimental data available for ammonia and methane is very good. Quantities necessary to evaluate the shilding for an arbitrary gauge are also given. The degree of gauge-invariance of the calculated properties is nt satisfactory in the ammonia, while better results are found for water.     

Quantitative prediction of gas-phase 19F nuclear magnetic shielding constants

Benchmark calculations of (19)F nuclear magnetic shielding constants are presented for a set of 28 molecules. Near-quantitative accuracy (ca. 2 ppm deviation from experiment) is achieved if (1) electron correlation is adequately treated by employing the coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) model augmented by a perturbative correction for triple excitations [CCSD(T)], (2) large (uncontracted) basis sets are used, (3) gauge-including atomic orbitals are used to ensure gauge-origin independence, (4) calculations are performed at accurate equilibrium geometries [obtained from CCSD(T)/cc-pVTZ calculations correlating all electrons], and (5) vibrational averaging and temperature corrections via second-order vibrational perturbation theory (VPT2) are included. For the CCSD(T)/13s9p4d3f calculations corrected for vibrational effects, mean and standard deviation from experiment are -1.9 and 1.6 ppm, respectively. Less elaborate theoretical treatments result in larger errors. Consideration of relative shifts can reduce the mean deviation (through an appropriately chosen reference compound), but does not change the standard deviation. Density-functional theory calculations of absolute and relative (19)F nuclear magnetic shielding constants are found to be, at best, as accurate as the corresponding Hartree-Fock self-consistent-field calculations and are not improved by consideration of vibrational effects. Molecular systems containing fluorine-oxygen, fluorine-nitrogen, and fluorine-fluorine bonds are found to be more challenging than the other investigated molecules for the considered theoretical methods.     

Systematic investigation on the geometric dependence of the calculated nuclear magnetic shielding constants

We perform a systematic examination on the dependence of the calculated nuclear magnetic shielding constants on the chosen geometry for a selective set of density functional methods of B3LYP, PBE0, and OPBE. We find that the OPBE exchange-correlation functional performs remarkably well when either the optimized geometries or the experimental geometries are used. The popular B3LYP and PBE0 functionals have a clear tendency of deshielding, giving shieldings that are usually too low and shifts that are usually too high, at the experimental geometries. Combined with the Hartree-Fock geometries, however, much improved magnetic constants are obtained for B3LYP and PBE0, due to the compensation effect from the systematic underestimation of bond lengths by the Hartree-Fock method.