Expanding and Testing a Computational Method for Predicting the Ground State Reduction Potentials of Organic Molecules on the Basis of Empirical Correlation to Experiment

Abstract

A method for predicting the ground state reduction potentials of organic molecules on the basis of the correlation of computed energy differences between the starting S-0 and one-electron-reduced D-0 species with experimental reduction potentials in acetonitrile has been expanded to cover 3.5 V of potential range and 74 compounds across 6 broad families of molecules. Utilizing the conductor-like polarizable continuum model of implicit solvent allows a global correlation that is computationally efficient and has improved accuracy, with r(2) \u3e 0.98 in all cases and root mean square deviation errors of(mean absolute deviationsmV) for either B3LYP/6-311+G(d,p) or B3LYP//6-31G(d) with an appropriate choice of radii (UAKS or UA0). The correlations are proven to be robust across a wide range of structures and potentials, including four larger (27-28 heavy atoms) and more conformationally flexible photochromic molecules not used in calibrating the correlation. The method is also proven to be robust to a number of minor student mistakes or methodological inconsistencies

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