0000000000968404

AUTHOR

Ivo Cacelli

A Two-State Computational Investigation of Methane C-H and Ethane C-C Oxidative Addition to [CpM(PH3)]n+ (M=Co, Rh, Ir;n=0, 1)

Reductive elimination of methane from methyl hydride half-sandwich phosphane complexes of the Group 9 metals has been investigated by DFT calculations on the model system [CpM(PH(3))(CH(3))(H)] (M = Co, Rh, Ir). For each metal, the unsaturated product has a triplet ground state; thus, spin crossover occurs during the reaction. All relevant stationary points on the two potential energy surfaces (PES) and the minimum energy crossing point (MECP) were optimized. Spin crossover occurs very near the sigma-CH(4) complex local minimum for the Co system, whereas the heavier Rh and Ir systems remain in the singlet state until the CH(4) molecule is almost completely expelled from the metal coordinati…

research product

Theoretical Study of the 15- and 17-Electron Structures of Cyclopentadienylchromium(III) and Cyclopentadienylmolybdenum(III) Complexes. Dichloride and Dimethyl Compounds

International audience; The structure and the energetics of the model systems CpMX2(PH3) + PH3 ⇄ CpMX2(PH3)2 (Cp = cyclopentadienyl; M = Cr, Mo; X = Cl, CH3) are studied by performing Møller−Plesset second order (MP2) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Extended basis sets are employed in the geometry optimizations. The results indicate that the structural preference can be traced back to the competition between electron pairing stabilization and M−P bond dissociation energy along the spin doublet surface. At all levels of calculation, the energy splitting, a measure of the cost of pairing the electron during the promotion process from the quartet ground state to the excited d…

research product

A Density Functional Study of Open-Shell Cyclopentadienyl−Molybdenum(II) Complexes. A Comparison of Stabilizing Factors: Spin-Pairing, Mo−X π Bonding, and Release of Steric Pressure

International audience; The dissociation of PH3 from the 18-electron system CpMoX(PH3)3 to afford the corresponding 16-electron CpMoX(PH3)2 fragment has been investigated theoretically by density functional theory for X = H, CH3, F, Cl, Br, I, OH, and PH2. The product is found to prefer a triplet spin state for all X ligands except PH2, the singlet−triplet gap varying between 1.7 kcal/mol for OH to 8.7 kcal/mol for F. The Mo−PH3 bond dissociation energy to the 16-electron ground state varies dramatically across the series, from 4.5 kcal/mol for OH to 23.5 kcal/mol for H, and correlates with experimental observations on trisubstituted phosphine derivatives. Geometry-optimized spin doublet Cp…

research product