Effect of solvents having different dielectric constants on reactivity: A conceptual DFT approach

Conceptual density functional theory is exploited to understand the reactivity in a medium of solvents with increasing dielectric constants. Aprotic as well as protic solvents are used for this study. It is found that the global parameters, such as chemical potential and hardness, decrease from gas phase to solvent phase with increasing dielectric constant. However, it is observed that the Fukui functions of the reactive atoms increase significantly with the dielectric constants of the aprotic solvents while for the protic solvents the variation of the reactivity indices is insignificant. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2010     

Reactivity of Dicoordinated Stannylones (Sn0) versus Stannylenes (SnII): An Investigation Using DFT‐Based Reactivity Indices

The reactivity of dicoordinated Sn⁰ compounds, stannylones, is probed using density functional theory (DFT)‐based reactivity indices and compared with the reactivity of dicoordinated Sn^II compounds, stannylenes. For the former compounds, the influence of different types of electron‐donating ligands, such as cyclic and acyclic carbenes, stannylenes and phosphines, on the reactivity of the central Sn atom is analyzed in detail. Sn⁰ compounds are found to be relatively soft systems with a high nucleophilicity, and the plots of the Fukui function f^? for an electrophilic attack consistently predict the highest reactivity on the Sn atom. Next, complexes of dicoordinated Sn compounds with different Lewis acids of variable hardness are computed. In a first part, the double‐base character of stannylones is demonstrated in interactions with the hardest Lewis acid H⁺. Both the first and second proton affinities (PAs) are high and are well correlated with the atomic charge on the Sn atom, probing its local hardness. These observations are also in line with electrostatic potential plots that demonstrate that the tin atom in Sn⁰ compounds bears a higher negative charge in comparison to Sn^II compounds. Stannylones and stannylenes can be distinguished from each other by the partial charges at Sn and by various reactivity indices. It also becomes clear that there is a smooth transition between the two classes of compounds. We furthermore demonstrate both from DFT‐based reactivity indices and from energy decomposition analysis, combined with natural orbitals for chemical valence (EDA‐NOCV), that the monocomplexed stannylones are still nucleophilic and as reactive towards a second Lewis acid as towards the first one. The dominating interaction is a strong σ‐type interaction from the Sn atom towards the Lewis acid. The interaction energy is higher for complexes with the cation Ag⁺ than with the non‐charged electrophiles BH₃, BF₃, and AlCl₃.     

Density functional study on electronic structures and reactivity in methyl‐substituted chelates used in organic light‐emitting diodes

The electronic structure and reactivity trends of a set of tris‐(n‐methyl‐8‐quinolinolato) metal (III) (n = 0, 3, 4, 5; metal = Al⁺³, Ga⁺³) used as electron‐transport layer in organic light‐emitting diodes were studied and compared. All geometries were optimized at B3LYP/6‐31G(d,p) level of theory. The geometries of the ground state (S₀) of unsubstituted molecules AlQ3 and GaQ3 were found to be slightly affected by the methyl group, which is in agreement with previous works. Methyl‐derivatives conserve largely the electronic structures of AlQ3 and GaQ3. The energies of the frontier orbitals highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital are raised by the electron‐releasing effect of methyl group. Molecular orbital contribution analysis reveals that the orbital population is essentially the same for both MQ3 and their derivatives. Analyses of the ionization potential and electron affinity showed that MQ3 tend to be better hole‐blockers than methylated analogues and 5Me‐MQ3 have higher hole‐injection capability than the other methyl‐substituted derivatives. The global reactivity analysis showed that the electrophilicity index can be an indicator of electron‐injection capability in these complexes. Local reactivity analysis showed that atomic sites that are prone to nucleophilic/electrophilic attack are atoms C‐4 in L3/C‐5 in L1. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2010     

Theory of non-local (pair site) reactivity from model static-density response functions

Activation is a fundamental and well-known concept in chemistry. It may be qualitatively defined as an increase in the chemical reactivity pattern of a molecule at a given site k when the system is locally perturbed at a different site l, say. This external perturbation arise from a localized molecular rearrangement, a substitution, a selective solvation or simply by the approach of a reagent of variable hardness. This work presents a theoretical approach intending to quantify this activation concept in the density functional framework. This is done here by first calculating the fluctuation of the electron density at a given site k for the ground state of the isolated substrate (static reactivity model) and then incorporating the substrate and model electrophile reagents in a spatial disposition related to a virtual transition structure for the parent system. This perturbation is assumed representable by local changes in the external potential. It is shown that a local approximation to the softness kernel s(r, r′) yields a simple expression for the fluctuation of the electron density δρ(r _k ), which shows that this change becomes proportional to the variation of an effective potential δu(r _k ), containing the information on the variation in the chemical potential and the external perturbing potential at site k; the proportionality constant being the local softness s ⁰(r k) at that site. The strong local approximation made to the kernel s(r, r′) causes the second reactivity site (l) to implicitly appear in the formulation through the changes in the electronic chemical potential term. It is shown that the introduction of a less restrictive approach to the linear response function, obtained from a model Kohn-Sham one-electron density matrix, leads to the same result. Non-locality is therefore self-contained in the electronic chemical potential contribution to the modified potential, and may be associated with an intramolecular charge transfer between the active sites of the ambident nucleophilic/electrophilic substrate, promoted by the presence of the reagents. The resulting formulation of pair-site reactivity is illustrated for the electrophilic attack on the CN⁻ ion by different model electrophile agents of variable hardness. It is shown that correct reactivity indexes are obtained only when the topology of the transition structure is used as a vantage point to perturb the CN⁻ ion. The calculations were performed at both density functional theory and ab-initio Hartree-Fock levels. The results show that the proposed model is independent of the method used to obtain ρ(r). Received: 30 September 1997 / Accepted: 30 December 1997     

Assessment of the extended Koopmans' theorem for the chemical reactivity: Accurate computations of chemical potentials,chemical hardnesses,and electrophilicity indices

The extended Koopmans' theorem (EKT) provides a straightforward way to compute ionization potentials and electron affinities from any level of theory. Although it is widely applied to ionization potentials, the EKT approach has not been applied to evaluation of the chemical reactivity. We present the first benchmarking study to investigate the performance of the EKT methods for predictions of chemical potentials (μ) (hence electronegativities), chemical hardnesses (η), and electrophilicity indices (ω). We assess the performance of the EKT approaches for post‐Hartree–Fock methods, such as Møller–Plesset perturbation theory, the coupled‐electron pair theory, and their orbital‐optimized counterparts for the evaluation of the chemical reactivity. Especially, results of the orbital‐optimized coupled‐electron pair theory method (with the aug‐cc‐pVQZ basis set) for predictions of the chemical reactivity are very promising; the corresponding mean absolute errors are 0.16, 0.28, and 0.09 eV for μ, η, and ω, respectively. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

煤化学的前沿与挑战:结构与反应

任何物质的化学反应性质均与其结构有关,煤也不例外.人类对煤研究和利用的历史一直包括对煤的结构与反应的探索,依据从不同层面得到的信息提出了许多煤结构模型并用多种方式表述了煤的反应行为.然而到目前为止,这些探索还没有达到准确解析化学现象所要求的"分子水平".本文简要分析了"煤结构和反应"的认识发展过程,并结合自己的思考和研究结果,试图提出从分子水平进一步发展煤化学的思路和挑战,以供参考.