Photoelectron spectrum and breakdown diagram of ethanolamine: conformers, excited states, and thermochemistry.

Advanced theoretical methodologies and photoelectron photoion coincidence spectroscopy were used to investigate the photoionization of ethanolamine in the 8-18 eV energy range. We identified the low-lying cation conformers and the excited cation electronic states after vertical excitation from the most stable neutral conformer computationally. The TPES is composed of broad, structureless bands because of unfavorable Franck-Condon factors for origin transitions upon ionization, populating the D0-D7 cationic states from the most stable neutral conformer, g'Gg'. The adiabatic ionization energy of ethanolamine is calculated at 8.940 ± 0.010 eV, and the 0 K appearance energies of aminomethylium, NH2CH2+ (+CH2OH), and methyleneammonium, NH3CH2+ (+H2CO), are determined experimentally to be 9.708 ± 0.010 eV and 9.73 ± 0.03 eV, respectively. The former is used to re-evaluate the ethanolamine enthalpy of formation in the gas and liquid phases as ΔfH⊖298K[NH2(CH2)2OH, g] = -208.2 ± 1.2 kJ mol-1 and ΔfH⊖298K[NH2(CH2)2OH, l] = -267.8 ± 1.2 kJ mol-1. This represents a substantial correction of the previous experimental determination and is supported by ab initio calculations.

In silico design of a new Zn-triazole based metal-organic framework for CO2 and H2O adsorption.

In search for future good adsorbents for CO2 capture, a nitrogen-rich triazole-type Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) is proposed based on the rational design and theoretical molecular simulations. The structure of the proposed MOF, named Zinc Triazolate based Framework (ZTF), is obtained by replacing the amine-organic linker of MAF-66 by a triazole, and its structural parameters are deduced. We used grand-canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations based on generic classical force fields to correctly predict the adsorption isotherms of CO2 and H2O. For water adsorption in MAF-66 and ZTF, simulations revealed that the strong hydrogen bonding interactions of water with the N atoms of triazole rings of the frameworks are the main driving forces for the high adsorption uptake of water. We also show that the proposed ZTF porous material exhibits exceptional high CO2 uptake capacity at low pressure, better than MAF-66. Moreover, the nature of the interactions between CO2 and the MAF-66 and ZTF surface cavities was examined at the microscopic level. Computations show that the interactions occur at two different sites, consisting of Lewis acid-Lewis base interactions and hydrogen bonding, together with obvious electrostatic interactions. In addition, we investigated the influence of the presence of H2O molecules on the CO2 adsorption on the ZTF MOF. GCMC simulations reveal that the addition of H2O molecules leads to an enhancement of the CO2 adsorption at very low pressures but a reduction of this CO2 adsorption at higher pressures.

Spectroscopy of the electronic excited states of thioxophosphane, HPS, and of its deuterated species.

The stable low energy states of the HPS and DPS molecules have been studied through multi-reference ab initio methods in conjunction with large atomic basis sets. Stable states for these species have been examined up to 7 eV above the ground state minimum. We found six stable electronic states that are mostly mono-configurational. These states may be involved in the photodynamics and photodissociation of this molecule. In particular, the 2 1A' state presents two minima on the potential energy surface, one of them close to linear configuration. This state may be populated after the absorption of a visible photon from the ground state and gives rise to large amplitude motions that may eventually induce isomerization to electronically excited HSP. Moreover, we characterized these states spectroscopically to facilitate the assignment of the vibronic spectra of the HPS and DPS species. For these low-energy states, we thus computed vertical and adiabatic excitation energies, and for the stable ones, a full set of spectroscopic constants including harmonic frequencies and anharmonic vibrational, rotational, and centrifugal distortion constants. The calculated potential energy surfaces for these states have been used in a variational procedure to deduce the pattern of vibrational levels up to 4000 cm-1 above the corresponding vibrationless level. Our data may serve for the assignment of the IR and Vis spectra of HPS and DPS.

Disentangling the complex spectrum of the ethynyl cation.

The ethynyl cation, C2H+, is of great importance in astrophysical media and in combustion. It is involved in the formation of larger organic compounds and in their decomposition mechanisms. Here, we investigate the low-lying electronic states of this cation using pure ab initio methodologies. The evolution of its potential energy surfaces along the stretching and bending coordinates reveals a high density of electronic states that favours mutual interactions and the mixing of wavefunctions. The ground state is of 3Π space symmetry and the lowest singlet state (1Π) is found to be a quasi-linear-quasi-linear Renner-Teller system. Our work suggests that the (spin-)rovibronic spectrum of such a molecular system is complicated, because of the contributions of multiple couplings, including Renner-Teller, vibronic and spin-orbit. We also deduced the adiabatic ionization energy of the ethynyl radical, in good agreement with recent measurements. In summary, our work shows that the ethynyl cation, in spite of its small size, still represents a challenging molecular problem to be solved.

Insights on the interaction of Zn2+ cation with triazoles: Structures, bonding, electronic excitation and applications.

At present, we investigate the structures, the stability, the bonding and the spectroscopy of the Zn2+-triazole complexes (Zn2+-Tz), which are subunits of triazolate based porous materials and Zn-enzymes. This theoretical work is performed using ab initio methods and density functional theory (DFT) where dispersion correction is included. Through these benchmarks, we establish the ability and reliability of M05-2X+D3 and PBE0+D3 functionals for the correct description of Zn2+-Tz bond since these DFTs lead to close agreement with post Hartree-Fock methods. Therefore, M05-2X+D3 and PBE0+D3 functionals are recommended for the characterization of larger organometallic complexes formed by Zn and N-rich linkers. For Zn2+-Tz, we found two stable σ-type complexes: (i) a planar structure where Zn2+ links to unprotonated nitrogen and (ii) an out-of-plane cluster where carbon interacts with Zn2+. The most stable isomers consist on a coordinated covalent bond between the lone pair of unprotonated nitrogen and the vacant 4s orbital of Zn2+. The roles of covalent interactions within these complexes are discussed after vibrational, NBO, NPA charges and orbital analyses. The bonding is dominated by charge transfer from Zn2+ to Tz and intramolecular charge transfer, which plays a vital role for the catalytic activity of these complexes. These findings are important to understand, at the microscopic level, the structure and the bonding within triazolate based macromolecular porous materials and Zn-enzymes.

Characterization and reactivity of the weakly bound complexes of the [H, N, S](-) anionic system with astrophysical and biological implications.

We investigate the lowest electronic states of doublet and quartet spin multiplicity states of HNS(-) and HSN(-) together with their parent neutral triatomic molecules. Computations were performed using highly accurate ab initio methods with a large basis set. One-dimensional cuts of the full-dimensional potential energy surfaces (PESs) along the interatomic distances and bending angle are presented for each isomer. Results show that the ground anionic states are stable with respect to the electron detachment process and that the long range parts of the PESs correlating to the SH(-) + N, SN(-) + H, SN + H(-), NH + S(-), and NH(-) + S are bound. In addition, we predict the existence of long-lived weakly bound anionic complexes that can be formed after cold collisions between SN(-) and H or SH(-) and N. The implications for the reactivity of these species are discussed; specifically, it is shown that the reactions involving SH(-), SN(-), and NH(-) lead either to the formation of HNS(-) or HSN(-) in their electronic ground states or to autodetachment processes. Thus, providing an explanation for why the anions, SH(-), SN(-), and NH(-), have limiting detectability in astrophysical media despite the observation of their corresponding neutral species. In a biological context, we suggest that HSN(-) and HNS(-) should be incorporated into H2S-assisted heme-catalyzed reduction mechanism of nitrites in vivo.

Theoretical spectroscopic investigations of HNS(q) and HSN(q) (q = 0, +1, -1) in the gas phase.

We performed accurate ab initio investigations of the geometric parameters and the vibrational structure of neutral HNS/HSN triatomics and their singly charged anions and cations. We used standard and explicitly correlated coupled cluster approaches in connection with large basis sets. At the highest levels of description, we show that results nicely approach those obtained at the complete basis set limit. Moreover, we generated the three-dimensional potential energy surfaces (3D PESs) for these molecular entities at the coupled cluster level with singles and doubles and a perturbative treatment of triple excitations, along with a basis set of augmented quintuple-zeta quality (aug-cc-pV5Z). A full set of spectroscopic constants are deduced from these potentials by applying perturbation theory. In addition, these 3D PESs are incorporated into variational treatment of the nuclear motions. The pattern of the lowest vibrational levels and corresponding wavefunctions, up to around 4000 cm(-1) above the corresponding potential energy minimum, is presented for the first time.