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We investigate the torsion potentials in two prototypical pi-conjugated polymers, polyacetylene and polydiacetylene, as a function of chain length using different flavors of density functional theory. Our study provides a quantitative analysis of the delocalization error in standard semilocal and hybrid density functionals and demonstrates how it can influence structural and thermodynamic properties. The delocalization error is quantified by evaluating the many-electron self-interaction error (MESIE) for fractional electron numbers, which allows us to establish a direct connection between the MESIE and the error in the torsion barriers. The use of non-empirically tuned long-range corrected hybrid functionals results in a very significant reduction of the MESIE and leads to an improved description of torsion barrier heights. In addition, we demonstrate how our analysis allows the determination of the effective conjugation length in polyacetylene and polydiacetylene chains.
The new N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) complex [PdCl2{(CN)(2)IMes}(PPh3)] (2) ({(CN)(2)IMes}: 4,5-dicyano-1,3-dimesitylimidazol-2-ylidene) and the NHC palladacycle [PdCl(dmba){(CN)(2)IMes}] (3) (dmba: N,N-dimethylbenzylamine) have been synthesized by thermolysis of 4,5-dicyano-1,3-dimesityl-2-(pentafluorophenyl) imidazoline (1) in the presence of suitable palladium(II) precursors. The acyclic complex 2 was formed by ligand exchange using the mononuclear precursor [PdCl2(PPh3)(2)] and the palladacycle 3 was formed by cleavage of the dinuclear chloro-bridged precursor [Pd(mu-Cl)(dmba)](2). The new NHC precursor 1-benzyl-4,5-dicyano-2-(pentafluorophenyl)-3-picolylimidazoline (5) was formed by condensation of pentafluorobenzaldehyde with N-benzyl-N'-picolyldiaminomaleonitrile (4). The NHC palladacycle [PdCl2{(CN)(2)IBzPic}] (6) ({(CN)(2)IBzPic}: 1-benzyl-4,5-dicyano-3-picolylimidazol-2-ylidene) was prepared by in situ thermolysis of 5 in the presence of [PdCl2(PhCN)(2)]. The three palladium(II) complexes were characterized by NMR and IR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and elemental analysis. In addition, the molecular structures of 2 and 3 were determined by X-ray diffraction. The pi-acidity of (CN)(2)IBzPic was compared with (CN)(2)IMes and perviously reported pi-acidic imidazol-2-ylidenes by NBO analysis. The Mizoroki-Heck (MH) reactions of various aryl halides with n-butyl acrylate were performed in the presence of complexes 2, 3 and 6. The new precatalysts showed high activity in the MH reactions giving good-to-excellent product yields with 0.1 mol-% pre-catalyst. The nature of the catalytically active species of 2, 3 and 6 was investigated by poisoning experiments with mercury and transmission electron microscopy. It was found that palladium nanoparticles formed from the precatalysts were involved in the catalytic process.
The efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) depends critically on the electronic structure of the interfaces in the active region. We employ recently developed dispersion-inclusive density functional theory (DFT) and GW methods to study the electronic structure of TiO2 clusters sensitized with catechol molecules. We show that the energy level alignment at the dye-TiO2 interface is the result of an intricate interplay of quantum size effects and dynamic screening effects and that it may be manipulated by nanostructuring and functionalizing the TiO2. We demonstrate that the energy difference between the catechol LUMO and the TiO2 LUMO, which is associated with the injection loss in DSCs, may be reduced significantly by reducing the dimensions of nanostructured TiO2 and by functionalizing the TiO2 with wide-gap moieties, which contribute additional screening but do not interact strongly with the frontier orbitals of the TiO2 and the dye. Precise control of the electronic structure may be achieved via "interface engineering" in functional nanostructures.
The electronic coupling between redox sites in mixed-valence systems has attracted the interest of the chemistry community for a long time. Many computational studies have focused on trying to determine its magnitude as a function of the nature of the redox sites and of the bridge(s) between them. However, in most instances, the quantum-chemical methodologies that have been employed suffer from intrinsic errors that lead to either an overlocalized or an overdelocalized character of the electronic structure. These deficiencies prevent an accurate depiction of the degree of charge (de)localization in the system and, as a result, of the extent of electronic coupling. Here we use nonempirically tuned long-range corrected density functional theory and show that it provides a robust, efficient approach to characterize organic mixed-valence systems. We first demonstrate the performance of this approach via a study of representative Robin-Day class-II (localized) and class-III (delocalized) complexes. We then examine a borderline class-II/class-III complex, which had proven difficult to describe accurately with standard density functional theory and Hartree-Fock methods.