No Arabic abstract
Nowadays, hydrogen activation by frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) and their applications have been demonstrated to be one of emerge research topics in the field of catalysis. Previous studies have shown that the thermodynamics of these reaction is determined by electronic structures of FLPs and solvents. Herein, we investigated the systems consisting of typical FLPs and ionic liquids (ILs), which are well known by their large number of types and excellent solvent effects. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed to study the thermodynamics for H2 activation by both inter- and intra-molecular FLPs, as well as the individual components. The results show that the computed overall Gibbs free energies in ILs are more negative than that computed in toluene. Through the thermodynamics partitioning, we find that ILs favor the H-H cleavage elemental step, while disfavored the elemental steps of proton attachment, hydride attachment and zwitterionic stabilization. Moreover, the results show that these effects are strongly dependent on the type of FLPs, where intra-molecular FLPs are more effected compared to the inter-molecular FLPs.
Steric hindered frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) have been shown to activate hydrogen molecules, and their reactivity is strongly determined by the geometric parameters of the Lewis acid s and bases. A recent experimental study showed that ionic liquids (ILs) could largely improve the effective configuration of FLPs. However, the detailed mechanistic profile is still unclear. Herein, we performed a molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, aimi ng to reveal the effects of ILs on the structures of FLPs, and to present a rule for selecting more efficient reaction media. For this purpose, mixture systems were adopt consisting of the ILs [Cnmim][NTf2] (n= 6, 10, 14), and the typical FLP (tBu)3P/B(C6F5)3 . Radial distribution function (RDF) results show that toluene competes with (tBu)3P to interact with B(C6F5)3 , resulting in a relatively low effective (tBu)3P/B(C6F5)3 complex. [Cnmim][NTf2] is more intended to form a solvated shell surrounding the (tBu)3P/B(C6F5)3 , which increases the amount of effective FLPs. Spatial distribution function (SDF) results show that toluene formed a continuum solvation shell, which hinders the interactions of (tBu)3P and B(C6F5)3 , while [Cnmim][NTf2] leave a relatively large empty space, which is accessible by (tBu3)P molecules, resulting in a higher probability of Lewis acids and bases interactions. Lastly, we find that the longer alkyl chain length of[Cnmim] cations, the higher probability of effective FLPs.
Hydrogen bonds (HBs) play a crucial role in the physicochemical properties of ionic liquids (ILs). At present, HBs between cations and anions (Ca-An) or between cations (Ca-Ca) in ILs have been reported extensively. Here, we provided DFT evidences for the exists of HBs between anions (An-An) in the IL 1-(2-hydroxyethyl)-3-methylimidazolium 4-(2-hydroxyethyl)imidazolide [HEMIm][HEIm]. The thermodynamics stabilities of anionic, cationic, and H2O dimers together with ionic pairs were studied by potential energy scans. The results show that the cation-anion pair is the most stable one, while the HB in anionic dimer possesses similar thermodynamics stability to the water dimer. The further geometric, spectral and electronic structure analyses demonstrate that the inter-anionic HB meets the general theoretical criteria of traditional HBs. The strength order of four HBs in complexes is cation-anion pair > H2O dimer = cationic dimer > anionic dimer. The energy decomposition analysis indicates that induction and dispersion interactions are the crucial factors to overcome strong Coulomb repulsions, forming inter-anionic HBs. Lastly, the presence of inter-anionic HBs in ionic cluster has been confirmed by a global minimum search for a system containing two ionic pairs. Even though hydroxyl-functionalized cations are more likely to form HBs with anions, there still have inter-anionic HBs between hydroxyl groups in the low-lying structures. Our studies broaden the understanding of HBs in ionic liquids and support the recently proposed concept of anti-electrostatic HBs.
We introduce an approximation to the short-range correlation energy functional with multide-terminantal reference involved in a variant of range-separated density-functional theory. This approximation is a local functional of the density, the density gradient, and the on-top pair density, which locally interpolates between the standard Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof correlation functional at vanishing range-separation parameter and the known exact asymptotic expansion at large range-separation parameter. When combined with (selected) configuration-interaction calculations for the long-range wave function, this approximation gives accurate dissociation energy curves of the H2, Li2, and Be2 molecules, and thus appears as a promising way to accurately account for static correlation in range-separated density-functional theory.
We have carried out a density functional theory study on the structures of DMSO clusters and analysed the structure and their stability using molecular electrostatic potential and quantum theory of atoms-in-molecules (QTAIM). The ground state geometry of the DMSO clusters, prefer to exist in ouroboros shape. Pair wise interaction energy calculation show the interaction between methyl groups of adjacent DMSO molecules and a destabilization is is created by the methyl groups which are away from each other. Molecular electrostatic potential analysis shows the existence of hole on the odd numbered clusters, which helps in their highly directional growth. QTAIM analysis show the existence of two intermolecular hydrogen bonds, of type SOC hydrogen bonds and methyl CHC dihydrogen bonds. The computed and Laplacian values were all positive for the intermolecular bonds, supporting the existence of noncovalent interactions. The computed ellipticity for the dihydrogen bonds have values > 2, which confirms the delocalization of electron, are mainly due to the hydrogen-hydrogen interactions of methyl groups. A plot of total hydrogen bonding energy vs the observed total local electron density shows linearity with correlation coefficient of near unity, which indicates the cooperative effects of intermolecular dihydrogen HH bonds.
We present a kinetic-energy density-functional theory and the corresponding kinetic-energy Kohn-Sham (keKS) scheme on a lattice and show that by including more observables explicitly in a density-functional approach already simple approximation strategies lead to very accurate results. Here we promote the kinetic-energy density to a fundamental variable along side the density and show for specific cases (analytically and numerically) that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the external pair of on-site potential and site-dependent hopping and the internal pair of density and kinetic-energy density. Based on this mapping we establish two unknown effective fields, the mean-field exchange-correlation potential and the mean-field exchange-correlation hopping, that force the keKS system to generate the same kinetic-energy density and density as the fully interacting one. We show, by a decomposition based on the equations of motions for the density and the kinetic-energy density, that we can construct simple orbital-dependent functionals that outperform the corresponding exact-exchange Kohn-Sham (KS) approximation of standard density-functional theory. We do so by considering the exact KS and keKS systems and compare the unknown correlation contributions as well as by comparing self-consistent calculations based on the mean-field exchange for the keKS and the exact-exchange for the KS system, respectively.