Quantum-chemical study of the geometric and electronic structure of the CoC2 molecule

DFT (B3LYP) calculations have been performed to study the CoC₂ molecule in its different geometric conformations and electronic states. The energies have been refined using ab initio multiconfigurational CASSCF/CASPT2 calculations. Both approaches are in a good semi-quantitative agreement between themselves and predict the symmetric triangular (C_2v) structure to be more stable than the linear (C_∞v) conformation. The ground state has been found to be a quartet, which can formally be regarded as an ionic Co²⁺–C₂²⁻ complex, resulting from a transfer of the two 4s electrons of the cobalt atom to the 3σ_g orbital of the C₂ ligand and distributing the remaining seven valence electrons over the split 3d orbitals.