Abstract
The ability to accurately predict the oxidation and reduction potentials of molecules is very useful in various fields and applications. Quantum mechanical calculations can be used to access this information, yet sometimes the usefulness of these calculations can be limited because of the computational requirements for large systems. Methodologies that yield strong linear correlations between calculations and experimental data have been reported, however the balance between accuracy and computational cost is always a major issue. In this work, linear correlations (with an R2 value of up to 0.9990) between DFT-calculated HOMO/LUMO energies and 70 redox potentials from a series of 51 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (obtained from the literature) are presented. The results are compared to previously reported linear correlations that were obtained with a more expensive computational methodology based on a Born-Haber thermodynamic cycle. It is shown in this article that similar or better correlations can be obtained with a simple and cheaper calculation.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Dr. Jason G. Gillmore for very useful discussions and suggestions. Thanks as well to John J. Tomlin for his suggestions, and all the members of the Gust-Moore-Moore research group for inspirational conversations.
DDMH is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF-GRFP) under Grant No. DGE-0802261 and by the More Graduate Education at Mountain States Alliance (MGE@MSA) Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) National Science Foundation (NSF) Cooperative Agreement No. HRD-0450137.
This work was supported as part of the Center for Bio-Inspired Solar Fuel Production, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001016.
Calculations were performed using the ASU Advance Computer Center Saguaro system.
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Méndez-Hernández, D.D., Tarakeshwar, P., Gust, D. et al. Simple and accurate correlation of experimental redox potentials and DFT-calculated HOMO/LUMO energies of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. J Mol Model 19, 2845–2848 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00894-012-1694-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00894-012-1694-7