Dioxygen Activation by a Non-Heme Iron(II) Complex: Theoretical Study toward Understanding Ferric–Superoxo Complexes

Anomalous property of Ag(BO2)2 hyperhalogen: does spin-orbit coupling matter?

Hyperhalogens were recently identified as a new class of highly electronagative species which are composed of metals and superhalogens. In this work, high-level theoretical calculations and photoelectron spectroscopy experiments are systematically conducted to investigate a series of coinage-metal-containing hyperhalogen anions, Cu(BO(2))(2)(-), Ag(BO(2))(2)(-), and Au(BO(2))(2)(-). The vertical electron detachment energy (VDE) of Ag(BO(2))(2)(-) is anomalously higher than those of Au(BO(2))(2)(-) and Cu(BO(2))(2)(-). In quantitative agreement with the experiment, high-level ab initio calculations reveal that spin-orbit coupling (SOC) lowers the VDE of Au(BO(2))(2)(-) significantly. The sizable magnitude of about 0.5 eV of SOC effect on the VDE of Au(BO(2))(2)(-) demonstrates that SOC plays an important role in the electronic structure of gold hyperhalogens. This study represents a new paradigm for relativistic electronic structure calculations for the one-electron-removal process of ionic Au(I)L(2) complexes, which is characterized by a substantial SOC effect.

Model iron-oxo species and the oxidation of imidazole: insights into the mechanism of OvoA and EgtB?

A density functional theory cluster and first-principles quantum and statistical mechanics approach have been used to investigate the ability of iron-oxygen intermediates to oxidize a histidine cosubstrate, which may then allow for the possible formation of 2- and 5-histidylcysteine sulfoxide, respectively. Namely, the ability of ferric superoxo (Fe(III)O(2)(•-)), Fe(IV)═O, and ferrous peroxysulfur (Fe(III)OOS) complexes to oxidize the imidazole of histidine via an electron transfer (ET) or a proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) was considered. While the high-valent mononuclear Fe(IV)═O species is generally considered the ultimate biooxidant, the free energies for its reduction (via ET or PCET) suggest that it is unable to directly oxidize histidine's imidazole. Instead, only the ferrous peroxysulfur complexes are sufficiently powerful enough oxidants to generate a histidyl-derived radical via a PCET process. Furthermore, while this process preferably forms a HisN(δ)(-H)(•) radical, several such oxidants are also suggested to be capable of generating the higher-energy HisC(δ)(-H)(•) and HisC(ε)(-H)(•) radicals. Importantly, the present results suggest that formation of the sulfoxide-containing products (seen in both OvoA and EgtB) is a consequence of the reduction of a powerful Fe(III)OOS oxidant via a PCET.

How Accurate Can a Local Coupled Cluster Approach Be in Computing the Activation Energies of Late-Transition-Metal-Catalyzed Reactions with Au, Pt, and Ir?

To improve the accuracy of local coupled cluster (LCC) methods in computing activation energies, we propose herein a new computational scheme. Its applications to various types of late-transition-metal-catalyzed reactions involving Au, Pt, and Ir indicate that the new corrective approach for LCC methods can downsize the mean unsigned deviation and maximum deviation, from the CCSD(T)/CBS reference, to about 0.3 and 0.9 kcal/mol. Using this method, we also calibrated the performance of popular density functionals, with respect to the same test set of reactions. It is concluded that the best functional is the general-purpose double hybrid functional B2GP-PLYP. Other well-performing functionals include the "kinetic" functionals M06-2X and BMK, which have a large percentage of HF exchange, and general-purpose functionals like PBE0 and wB97X. Comparatively, general-purpose functionals like PBE0 and TPSSh perform much better than the tested "kinetic" functionals for Pt-/Ir-catalyzed reactions, while the opposite is true for Au-catalyzed reactions. In contrast, wB97X performs more uniformly in these two classes of reactions. These findings hint that even within the scope of late transition metals, different types of reactions may require different types of optimal DFT methods. Empirical dispersion correction of DFT was found to have a small or no effect on the studied reactions barriers.