How Accurate is the SMD Model for Predicting Free Energy Barriers for Nucleophilic Substitution Reactions in Polar Protic and Dipolar Aprotic Solvents?

Abstract

In the past seven years, the SMD (Solvent Model Density) method has been widely used by computational chemists. Thus, assessment on the reliability of this model for modeling chemical process in solution is worthwhile. In this report, it was investigated six anion-molecule nucleophilic substitution reactions in methanol and dipolar aprotic solvents. Geometry optimizations have been done at SMD/X3LYP level and single point energy calculations at CCSD(T)/TZVPP + diff level. Our results have indicated that the SMD model is not adequate for dipolar aprotic solvents, with a root of mean squared (RMS) error of 5.6 kcal mol . The classical protic to dipolar aprotic solvent rate acceleration effect was not predicted by the SMD model for the tested systems.Keywords: continuum solvation model, ion solvation, solvent effect, aromatic nucleophilic substitution, M11 functional IntroductionIn the middle of the twentieth century, several experimental studies have led to foundation of empirical rules for qualitative prediction of solvent effects on chemical reactions, authoritatively reviewed by Parker 1 in a classical paper. Nevertheless, a deeper view on solvent effects was only possible with experimental studies of gas phase ion-molecule reactions [2][3][4][5][6] and theoretical modeling of these processes. [7][8][9] It was evident from theoretical studies that solute-solvent interactions can be very strong and produce a profound effect on chemical reactivity. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] On the other hand, gas phase dynamic of chemical reactions can open new mechanistic possibilities. 18,19 Among the different solvents used to conduct ionic chemical reactions, polar protic and dipolar aprotic solvents are paramount due to their property of solubilize ionic species. 20 Methanol is a polar protic solvent and its ability to solvate ions is similar to water. 21,22 In addition, it has the advantage of solubilize many organic molecules not soluble in water. Some usual dipolar aprotic solvents are dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), dimethylformamide (DMF) and acetonitrile. Because anions are less solvated in these solvents, anion-molecule reactions are accelerated when transferred from protic to dipolar aprotic solvents. Our ability to describe theoretically this effect is an important goal and a challenge for continuum solvation models once requires these models be able to describe specific solutesolvent interactions. 23 Considering that the Born formula for solvation of a spherical ion of charge q and radius R into a solvent with dielectric constant ε is given by:(1) it could be noted that the use of the same "molecular cavity" for an ionic solute into a protic and dipolar aprotic solvent with high dielectric constant would lead to very similar solvation free energy of ions. A possibility to overcome this problem would be to use different molecular cavity for protic and dipolar aprotic solvents. This approach has reached some successful ten years ago using the polarizable continuum model (PCM) in the study of anion-molecule reaction...

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