Application of the ONIOM (QM/QM) Method in the Study of Molybdena-Silica System Active in Olefin Metathesis

摘要

The two-layer ONIOM method is applied for description of Mo-methylidene center on silica, which is the active site of olefin metathesis. Two clusters of different size are employed to model the silica surface. For the larger one, two differently defined inner layers (the model systems) are tested. In all the calculations, the B3LYP functional is adopted for the inner layer, while the Hartree-Fock method or the local density approximation (SVWN5 functional) is used for the treatment of the real system. Based on the reference results obtained for the real system from the B3LYP calculations, it is concluded that both B3LYP:HF and B3LYP:SVWN5 schemes are suitable for proper description of the geometry of the Mo center and its activity in ethene metathesis. The former combination is a little better choice, however. It is also shown that the inner layer, including the third coordination sphere of molybdenum, is large enough to obtain satisfactory results. On the other hand, the relative energies and some geometrical parameters of the active site are dependent on the size of the entire system studied. The sensitivity of the geometrical parameters and reaction energies to the changes of the scale factor g, involved in the ONIOM scheme, is studied as well. It is concluded that the link atom distance is not crucial for obtaining correct results.