Relocalization in floppy free radicals: the OCNO and OCCHO isoelectronic series.

A survey of the XCNY and XCCHY radicals with X and Y = CH(2), NH, and O has been carried out by ab initio QCISD/6-311G(d,p) calculations to assess the impact of low-lying excited electronic states on the molecular dynamics. Multiple canonical structures may be drawn for each of these structural formulas, with the principal competition for most stable configuration between a (2)A' form with four electrons in a" orbitals and a (2)A" form with five a" electrons. Other low-lying configurations may include a 5a" state with nominally pentavalent nitrogen and a 6a" state. Optimized geometries and harmonic frequencies were evaluated for the lowest-energy minima on the potential energy surfaces. Localized unpaired electron density causes the 4a" state to be the most stable for (NH)CCHO and OCCHY, whereas allylic resonance stabilization favors the 5a" state for all other radicals in the set. For five of the 18 molecules studied, secondary minima (excluding conformers) are found within 30 kJ mol(-)(1) of the most stable state at the QCISD/6-311G(d,p) level, suggesting that photolysis or pyrolysis of parent compounds may result in multiple isomers of the resulting reactive intermediates. Predicted equilibrium geometries, approximate thermochemical quantities for dissociation of the central bond, and selected spectroscopic parameters are presented for all 18 structural formulas. Convergence tests were also performed for the glyoxallyl radical (OCCHO) to resolve discrepancies between single- and multireference post-SCF results. These tests find that extension of the MCSCF methods to include sigma bonding orbitals or virtual-orbital CI brings MCSCF relative energies into agreement with results from standard single-reference CI and CC methods. Relative configurational energies evaluated at Hartree-Fock levels routinely differ from post-SCF values by 30 kJ mol(-1) or more.