Previously unknown manifestation of heavy atom effect on the NMR chemical shifts of βand γ-protons initiated by the relativistic effects of the tellurium and selenium atoms has been investigated in the representative series of selenium-and tellurium-containing compounds. To approve the four-component density functional approach to be the appropriate tool for the investigation of the heavy atom on light atom effect (HALA), the benchmark calculations of the proton chemical shifts have been performed at the CCSD level using comprehensively chosen locally dense basis set with taking into account solvent, vibrational, and relativistic corrections.A good agreement with the experimental data was achieved. The magnitudes of the relativistic HALA corrections to βand γ-proton chemical shifts were found to vary in a wide range, namely from −3.08 ppm for the γ-proton of methyltelluraldehyde to 14.51 ppm for β-proton in benzotelluraldehyde.
K E Y W O R D Schalcogens, 1 H NMR, HALA, relativistic effects
| INTRODUCTIONAt the present day 1 H NMR spectroscopy plays a major role in the identification and structural elucidation of organic and organometallic compounds. Proton nucleus has very high intrinsic NMR sensitivity due to the significant natural abundance (>99.9%) of the 1 H hydrogen isotopes and a very high gyromagnetic ratio.Thus, proton NMR spectroscopy represents the most straightforward way of receiving structural information, even for the most problematic cases, when, for example, the concentration of a sample is very low.With the growth of computational capacities theoretical modeling of the proton NMR spectra (chemical shifts and spin-spin coupling constants) has become the one of the most powerful supplementary tools for solving structures in proton NMR spectroscopy. As a consequence, the accuracy of prediction of 1 H NMR chemical shifts and spin-spin coupling constants involving proton nuclei is of utmost importance at the present time.When treating the molecules, containing one or more heavy elements, not necessarily located in close vicinity to NMR protons under study, relativistic effects might come into play. The omission of the relativistic effects when modeling the 1 H NMR spectra of molecules containing heavy atoms usually results in the erroneous predictions, sometimes not even falling into the expected range. Thus, an influence of the relativistic effects on the 1 H NMR spectral parameters is one of the most important accuracy factors, which ought to be considered when dealing with the compounds containing heavy elements. An influence of the relativistic effects initiated by the presence of heavy atom (HA) on the nuclear shielding of light atom (LA) or spin-spin coupling constant between two LAs is called as relativistic HALA effect.It has been noticed that 1 H NMR chemical shifts are highly sensitive to the presence of heavy atoms. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] At the first time HALA effect on proton NMR shielding constants was investigated as earlier as in the beginning of 1970s in hydrogen halides by ...