An evaluation of quantum chemical calculations of reaction energies for catalytic activation processes: The activation of propane by a rhodium catalyst revisited

摘要

In this paper we report the state of the art CCSD(T)//MP2 ab initio calculations for the activation of propane by cyclopentadienyl carbonyl rhodium, (Cp)Rh(CO), using the effective core potential of Hay and Wadt (LANL2DZ) for rhodium atom and the correlated consistent polarized valence double-ξ basis set (cc-pVDZ) for C, H and O atoms. The CCSD(T) energy values are used as reference to assess the effect of electron correlation on the reaction energies, as well as the performance of density functional theory (DFT) energy values using various functionals. An investigation on the accuracy of DFT results is relevant since their use in calculations involving large molecular systems is a computationally efficient strategy that enables us to tackle important problems in organometallics field and supramolecular chemistry. Our results for the small model system show that all DFT functionals used here correctly predict the CCSD(T) energy pattern and also reproduce very satisfactorily the MP2 geometrical parameters. The BP86, PBE1PBE and PW91 functionals exhibited the best agreement with structural parameters and relative energy values as compared with ab initio post-HartreeFock results, showing a potential use in theoretical investigations on larger systems.