A database of 77 adiabatic carbon 1s ionization energies has been prepared, covering linear and cyclic alkanes and alkenes, linear alkynes, and methyl- or fluoro-substituted benzenes. Individual entries are believed to carry uncertainties of less than 30 meV in ionization energies and less than 20 meV for shifts in ionization energies. The database provides an unprecedented opportunity for assessing the accuracy of theoretical schemes for computing inner-shell ionization energies and their corresponding chemical shifts. Chemical shifts in carbon 1s ionization energies have been computed for all molecules in the database using Hartree-Fock, Møller-Plesset (MP) many-body perturbation theory of order 2 and 3 as well as various approximations to full MP4, and the coupled-cluster approximation with single- and double-excitation operators (CCSD) and also including a perturbational estimate of the energy effect of triple-excitation operators (CCSD(T)). Moreover, a wide range of contemporary density functional theory (DFT) methods are also evaluated with respect to computing experimental shifts in C1s ionization energies. Whereas the top ab initio methods reproduce the observed shifts almost to within the experimental uncertainty, even the best-performing DFT approaches meet with twice the root-mean-squared error and thrice the maximum error compared to CCSD(T). However, a number of different density energy functionals still afford sufficient accuracy to become tools in the analysis of complex C1s photoelectron spectra.

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Electrophilic addition to multiple carbon-carbon bonds has been investigated for a series of twelve aliphatic and aromatic alkenes and the corresponding alkynes. For all molecules, enthalpies of protonation and activation energies for HCl addition across the multiple bonds have been calculated. Considering the protonation process as a cationic limiting case of electrophilic addition, the sets of protonation enthalpies and gas-phase activation energies allow for direct comparison between double- and triple-bond reactivities in both ionic and dipolar electrophilic reactions. The results from these model reactions show that the alkenes have similar or slightly lower enthalpies of protonation, but have consistently lower activation energies than do the alkynes. These findings are compared with results from high resolution carbon 1s photoelectron spectra measured in the gas phase, where the contribution from carbons of the unsaturated bonds are identified. Linear correlations are found for both protonation and activation energies as functions of carbon 1s energies. However, there are deviations from the lines that reflect differences between the three processes. Finally, substituent effects for alkenes and alkynes are compared using both activation and carbon 1s ionization energies.

The carbon 1s photoelectron spectra of a series of aliphatic alkynes and alkenes that have the possibility of possessing two or more conformers have been recorded with high resolution. The two conformers of 2-hexyne and 4-methyl-1-pentyne, anti and gauche, have been identified and quantified from an analysis of their carbon 1s photoelectron spectra, yielding 30 ± 5% and 70 ± 6% anti conformers, respectively. In the case of 1-hexyne, the photoelectron spectrum is shown to provide partial information on the distribution of conformers. Central to these analyses is a pronounced ability of the C1s photoemission process to distinguish between conformers that display weak γ-CH/π hydrogen bonding and those that do not. For the corresponding alkene analogs, similar analyses of their C1s photoelectron spectra do not lead to conclusive information on the conformational equilibria, mainly because of significantly smaller chemical shifts and higher number of conformers compared with the alkynes.