Mechanism Of N(5)-ethyl-flavinium Cation Formation Upon Electrochemical Oxidation Of N(5)-ethyl-4a-hydroxyflavin Pseudobase

We investigated the oxidation behavior of 5-ethyl-4a-hydroxy-3-methy1-4a,5-dihydrolumitlavin (pseudobase Et-FlH) in acetonitrile with the aim of determining if the two-electron oxidized Et-FlOH(2+) undergoes a release of hydroxyl cation and the production of 5-ethyl-3methyllumiflavinium cation (Et-Fl(+)). The focus of this work is to investigate the possibility of using Et-FlOH as a catalyst for water oxidation. The cyclic voltammetry demonstrates that Et-FlOH exhibits two one-electron oxidation potentials at +0.95 and +1.4 V versus normal hydrogen electrode (NHE), with the second oxidation potential being irreversible. The production of Et-FY\u27 is observed in the cyclic voltammetry of Et-FlOH and has been previously assigned to the release of OH(+) from the two-electron oxidized Et-FlOH(2+). The results of our study show that this is not the case: (i) we performed bulk electrolysis of the electrolyte solution at +2 V and then added Et-FlOH to the electrolyzed solution. We found that Et-Fr is produced from this solution, even though Et-FlOH itself was not oxidized; (ii) reactions of Et-FlOH with chemical oxidants (eerie ammonium nitrate, nitrosyl tetrafluoroborate, and tetrabutylammonium persulfate) demonstrate. that Et-Fl(+) production occurs only in the presence of strong Lewis acids, such as Ce(4+) and NO(+) ions. On the basis of these results, we propose that the production of Et-Fl+ in the electrochemistry of Et-FlOH(-1) occurs because of the shift in the Et-FlOH/Et-Fl+ acid base equilibrium in the presence of protons released during anodic oxidation. We identified two sources of protons: (i) oxidation of traces of water present in the acetonitrile releases oxygen and protons and (ii) two-electron oxidized Et-FlOH(2+) releases protons located on the N(5)-alkyl chain. The release of protons from Et-FlOH(2+) was confirmed by cyclic voltammetry of Et-FlOH in the presence of pyridine as a base. The first oxidation peak of Et-FlOH at +0.95 V is reversible in the absence of pyridine. The addition of pyridine leads to the shift of the oxidation potential to a less positive value, which is consistent with a proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET). Furthermore, the anodic current increases, and the cathodic peak becomes irreversible, giving rise to two additional reduction peaks at -0.2 and -1 V. The same reduction peaks were observed in the high scan rate cyclic voltammogram of Et-FlOH in the absence of pyridine, implying that the release of protons indeed occurs from Et-FlOH(2+). To determine which functional group of Et-FlOH(center dot+) is the source of protons, we performed DFT calculations at the B3LYP/6-311++G level of theory for a reaction of Et-FlOH(center dot+). with pyridine and identified two proton sources: (i) the \u3eN-CH(2)(-) group of the N(5) alkyl chain and (ii) the OH group in the 4a-position of the radical cation. Because the appearance of new reduction peaks at 0.2 and 1.0 V occurs in the model compound that lacks OH protons (Et-FlOMe), we conclude that the proton removal occurs predominantly from the \u3eN-CH(2)- moiety

Electronic Properties Of N(5)-ethyl Flavinium Ion

We investigated the electronic properties of N(5)-ethyl flavinium perchlorate (Et-Fl(+)) and compared them to those of its parent compound, 3-methyllumiflavin (Fl). Absorption and fluorescence spectra of Fl and Et-Fl(+) exhibit similar spectral features, but the absorption energy of Et-Fl(+) is substantially lower than that of Fl. We calculated the absorption signatures of Fl and Et-Fl(+) using time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) methods and found that the main absorption bands of Fl and Et-Fl(+) are (pi,pi*) transitions for the S(1) and S(3) excited states. Furthermore, calculations predict that the S(2) state has (n,pi*) character. Using cyclic voltammetry and a simplistic consideration of the orbital energies, we compared the HOMO/LUMO energies of Fl and Et-Fl(+). We found that both HOMO and LUMO orbitals of Et-Fl(+) are stabilized relative to those in Fl, although the stabilization of the LUMO level was more pronounced. Visible and mid-IR pump-probe experiments demonstrate that Et-Fl(+) exhibits a shorter excited-state lifetime (590 ps) relative to that of Fl (several nanoseconds), possibly due to faster thermal deactivation in Et-Fl(+), as dictated by the energy gap law. Furthermore, we observed a fast (23-30 ps) S(2) -\u3e S(0) internal conversion in transient absorption spectra of both Fl and Et-Fl(+) in experiments that utilized pump excitations with higher energy

Efficient implementation of the pair atomic resolution of the identity approximation for exact exchange for hybrid and range- separated density functionals.

An efficient new molecular orbital (MO) basis algorithm is reported implementing the pair atomic resolution of the identity approximation (PARI) to evaluate the exact exchange contribution (K) to self-consistent field methods, such as hybrid and range-separated hybrid density functionals. The PARI approximation, in which atomic orbital (AO) basis function pairs are expanded using auxiliary basis functions centered only on their two respective atoms, was recently investigated by Merlot et al. [J. Comput. Chem. 2013, 34, 1486]. Our algorithm is significantly faster than quartic scaling RI-K, with an asymptotic exchange speedup for hybrid functionals of (1 + X/N), where N and X are the AO and auxiliary basis dimensions. The asymptotic speedup is 2 + 2X/N for range separated hybrids such as CAM-B3LYP, ωB97X-D, and ωB97X-V which include short- and long-range exact exchange. The observed speedup for exchange in ωB97X-V for a C68 graphene fragment in the cc-pVTZ basis is 3.4 relative to RI-K. Like conventional RI-K, our method greatly outperforms conventional integral evaluation in large basis sets; a speedup of 19 is obtained in the cc-pVQZ basis on a C54 graphene fragment. Negligible loss of accuracy relative to exact integral evaluation is demonstrated on databases of bonded and nonbonded interactions. We also demonstrate both analytically and numerically that the PARI-K approximation is variationally stable

Efficient implementation of the pair atomic resolution of the identity approximation for exact exchange for hybrid and range- separated density functionals.

An efficient new molecular orbital (MO) basis algorithm is reported implementing the pair atomic resolution of the identity approximation (PARI) to evaluate the exact exchange contribution (K) to self-consistent field methods, such as hybrid and range-separated hybrid density functionals. The PARI approximation, in which atomic orbital (AO) basis function pairs are expanded using auxiliary basis functions centered only on their two respective atoms, was recently investigated by Merlot et al. [J. Comput. Chem. 2013, 34, 1486]. Our algorithm is significantly faster than quartic scaling RI-K, with an asymptotic exchange speedup for hybrid functionals of (1 + X/N), where N and X are the AO and auxiliary basis dimensions. The asymptotic speedup is 2 + 2X/N for range separated hybrids such as CAM-B3LYP, ωB97X-D, and ωB97X-V which include short- and long-range exact exchange. The observed speedup for exchange in ωB97X-V for a C68 graphene fragment in the cc-pVTZ basis is 3.4 relative to RI-K. Like conventional RI-K, our method greatly outperforms conventional integral evaluation in large basis sets; a speedup of 19 is obtained in the cc-pVQZ basis on a C54 graphene fragment. Negligible loss of accuracy relative to exact integral evaluation is demonstrated on databases of bonded and nonbonded interactions. We also demonstrate both analytically and numerically that the PARI-K approximation is variationally stable