Software for the frontiers of quantum chemistry: An overview of developments in the Q-Chem 5 package.

This article summarizes technical advances contained in the fifth major release of the Q-Chem quantum chemistry program package, covering developments since 2015. A comprehensive library of exchange-correlation functionals, along with a suite of correlated many-body methods, continues to be a hallmark of the Q-Chem software. The many-body methods include novel variants of both coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction approaches along with methods based on the algebraic diagrammatic construction and variational reduced density-matrix methods. Methods highlighted in Q-Chem 5 include a suite of tools for modeling core-level spectroscopy, methods for describing metastable resonances, methods for computing vibronic spectra, the nuclear-electronic orbital method, and several different energy decomposition analysis techniques. High-performance capabilities including multithreaded parallelism and support for calculations on graphics processing units are described. Q-Chem boasts a community of well over 100 active academic developers, and the continuing evolution of the software is supported by an "open teamware" model and an increasingly modular design.

Efficient exploration of reaction paths via a freezing string method.

The ability to efficiently locate transition states is critically important to the widespread adoption of theoretical chemistry techniques for their ability to accurately predict kinetic constants. Existing surface walking techniques to locate such transition states typically require an extremely good initial guess that is often beyond human intuition to estimate. To alleviate this problem, automated techniques to locate transition state guesses have been created that take the known reactant and product endpoint structures as inputs. In this work, we present a simple method to build an approximate reaction path through a combination of interpolation and optimization. Starting from the known reactant and product structures, new nodes are interpolated inwards towards the transition state, partially optimized orthogonally to the reaction path, and then frozen before a new pair of nodes is added. The algorithm is stopped once the string ends connect. For the practical user, this method provides a quick and convenient way to generate transition state structure guesses. Tests on three reactions (cyclization of cis,cis-2,4-hexadiene, alanine dipeptide conformation transition, and ethylene dimerization in a Ni-exchanged zeolite) show that this "freezing string" method is an efficient way to identify complex transition states with significant cost savings over existing methods, particularly when high quality linear synchronous transit interpolation is employed.

Effects of ligand composition on the oxidative carbonylation of toluene to toluic acid catalyzed by Rh(III) complexes.

Experimental and theoretical studies were conducted to investigate the influence of anionic ligands (e.g., CF(3)COO(-), CH(3)SO(3)(-)) on the catalytic activity and selectivity of Rh(III) in the oxidative carbonylation of toluene to toluic acid. The catalyst activity was found to pass through a maximum as the pK(a) of the conjugate Brønsted acid decreases from 4.63 to -2.00, with the maximum activity occurring at pK(a) = 0.35, corresponding to CClF(2)COOH. The theoretical analysis showed that the strength of toluene coordination increases with decreasing basicity of the anion (i.e., decreasing pK(a) of the corresponding acid). In contrast, the activation barrier for C-H activation increases with decreasing ligand pK(a). The experimentally observed effect of anion composition on catalyst activity can be explained using calculations of the apparent rate coefficient for toluene activation based on density functional theory and transition state theory. The ratio of p- to m-toluic acid formed increases with decreasing acid pK(a) and passes through a maximum for pK(a) = 0, corresponding to CF(3)COOH. The effect of anion composition on the isomer selectivity is attributed to changes in the charge density on the Rh(III) cation, which in turn affect the distribution of charge on the para and meta carbon atoms of the aromatic ring.

Spectroscopic investigation of the species involved in the rhodium-catalyzed oxidative carbonylation of toluene to toluic acid.

A spectroscopic investigation of complexes used to catalyze the oxidative carbonylation of toluene to p-toluic acid was conducted. Rhodium complexes were analyzed by (103)Rh and (13)C NMR, UV-visible spectroscopy, and infrared spectroscopy. In the presence of vanadium and oxygen, the resting state of the Rh-catalyst was found to exist as a Rh(III) complex with carbonyl and trifluoroacetate ligands, consistent with the structure Rh(CO)(2)(TFA)(3). The (13)C NMR spectrum of Rh((13)CO)(2)(TFA)(3) complex exhibited a carbonyl peak with an unusual degree of shielding, which resulted in the appearance of the carbonyl peak at an unprecedented upfield position in the (13)C NMR spectrum. This shielding was caused by interaction of the carbonyl group with the trifluoroacetate ligand. In the absence of oxygen, the Rh(III) complex reduced to Rh(I), and the reduced form exhibited properties resembling the catalyst precursor. Structures and spectroscopic properties calculated using density functional theory agreed closely with the experimental results. The vanadium co-catalyst used to reoxidize Rh(I) to Rh(III) was similarly characterized by (51)V NMR and UV-visible spectroscopy. The oxidized species corresponded to [(VO(2))(TFA)](2), whereas the reduced species corresponded to (VO)(TFA)(2). The spectroscopic results obtained in this study confirm the identity of the species that have been proposed to be involved in the Rh-catalyzed oxidative carbonylation of toluene to toluic acid.

Incorporating Linear Synchronous Transit Interpolation into the Growing String Method: Algorithm and Applications.

The growing string method is a powerful tool in the systematic study of chemical reactions with theoretical methods which allows for the rapid identification of transition states connecting known reactant and product structures. However, the efficiency of this method is heavily influenced by the choice of interpolation scheme when adding new nodes to the string during optimization. In particular, the use of Cartesian coordinates with cubic spline interpolation often produces guess structures which are far from the final reaction path and require many optimization steps (and thus many energy and gradient calculations) to yield a reasonable final structure. In this paper, we present a new method for interpolating and reparameterizing nodes within the growing string method using the linear synchronous transit method of Halgren and Lipscomb. When applied to the alanine dipeptide rearrangement and a simplified cationic alkyl ring condensation reaction, a significant speedup in terms of computational cost is achieved (30-50%).