Density Functional calculations have been performed to calculate the one-electron oxidation potential for ferrocene and the redox couples for a series of small transition metal compounds of the first-, second-, and third-row elements. The solvation effects are incorporated via a self-consistent reaction field (SCRF), using the polarized continuum model (PCM). From our study of seven different density functionals combined with three different basis sets for ferrocene, we find that no density functional method can reproduce the redox trends from experiment when referencing our results to the experimental absolute standard hydrogen electrode (SHE) potential. In addition, including additional necessary assumptions such as solvation effects does not lead to any conclusion regarding the appropriate functional. However, we propose that if one references their transition metal compounds results to the calculated absolute half-cell potential of ferrocene, they can circumvent the additional assumptions necessary to predict a redox couple. Upon employing this method on several organometallic and inorganic complexes, we obtained very good correlation between calculated and experimental values (R(2) = 0.97), making it possible to predict trends with a high level of confidence. The hybrid functional B3LYP systematically underestimates the redox potential; however, the linear correlation between DFT and experiment is good (R(2) = 0.96) when including a baseline shift. This protocol is a powerful tool that allows theoretical chemists to predict the redox potential in solution of several transition metal complexes a priori and aids in the rational design of redox-active catalysts.

Pseudo-octahedral complexes of iron find applications as switches in molecular electronic devices, materials for data storage, and, more recently, as candidates for dye-sensitizers in dye-sensitized solar cells. Iron, as a first row transition metal, provides a weak ligand-field splitting in an octahedral environment. This results in the presence of low-lying (5)T excited states that, depending on the identity of iron ligands, can become the ground state of the complex. The small energy difference between the low-spin, (1)A, and high-spin, (5)T, states presents a challenge for accurate prediction of their ground state using density functional theory. In this work, we investigate the applicability of the B3LYP functional to the ground state determination of first row transition metal complexes, focusing mainly on Fe(II) polypyridine complexes with ligands of varying ligand field strength. It has been shown previously that B3LYP artificially favors the (5)T state as the ground state of Fe(II) complexes, and the error in the energy differences between the (1)A and (5)T states is systematic for a set of structurally related complexes. We demonstrate that structurally related complexes can be defined as pseudo-octahedral complexes that undergo similar distortion in the metal-ligand coordination environment between the high-spin and low-spin states. The systematic behavior of complexes with similar distortion can be exploited, and the ground state of an arbitrary Fe(II) complex can be determined by comparing the calculated energy differences between the singlet and quintet electronic states of a complex to the energy differences of structurally related complexes with a known, experimentally determined ground state.

Effective strategies for designing Fe(II) coordination complexes with specifically tailored spinstate energetics can lead to advances in many areas of inorganic and materials chemistry. These include, but are not limited to, rational development of novel spin crossover complexes, efficient chromophores for photosensitization of dye-sensitized solar cells, and multifunctional materials.As the spin-state ordering of transition metal complexes is strongly rooted in their electronic structures, computational chemistry has naturally played an important role in assisting experimental work in this area. Unfortunately, despite many advances, accurate determination of the spin-state energetics of Fe(II) complexes still poses a remarkable challenge for virtually all applicable forms of electronic structure theory due to being controlled by a delicate balancing between correlation and exchange effects. This review focuses on some of the more notable successes and failures of modern electronic structure theory in properly describing these systems in the absence of solid-state effects. The strengths and weaknesses of using traditional wavefunction based methods and density functional theory are considered, and illustrative examples are provided to demonstrate that the modern computational chemist should make use of experimental data whenever possible and expect to utilize a combination of methods to obtain the best results. The review closes by briefly surveying some of the many interesting combined computational and experimental studies of Fe(II) chemistry that have lead to greater fundamental insight and practical understanding of this challenging class of systems.

We use a combined, theoretical and experimental, approach to investigate the spectroscopic properties and electronic structure of three ruthenium polypyridyl complexes, [Ru(tpy)(2)](2+), [Ru(tpy)(bpy)(H(2)O)](2+), and [Ru(tpy)(bpy)(Cl)](+) (tpy = 2,2':6',2''-terpyridine and bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine) in acetone, dichloromethane, and water. All three complexes display strong absorption bands in the visible region corresponding to a metal-to-ligand-charge-transfer (MLCT) transition, as well as the emission bands arising from the lowest lying (3)MLCT state. [Ru(tpy)(bpy)(Cl)](+) undergoes substitution of the Cl(-) ligand by H(2)O in the presence of water. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations demonstrate that the triplet potential energy surfaces of these molecules are complicated, with several metal-centered ((3)MC) and (3)MLCT states very close in energy. Solvent effects are included in the calculations via the polarizable continuum model as well as explicitly, and it is shown that they are critical for proper characterization of the triplet excited states of these complexes.

Studies of interfacial electron transfer (IET) in TiO(2) surfaces functionalized with (1) pyridine-4-phosphonic acid, (2) [Ru(tpy)(tpy(PO(3)H(2)))](2+), and (3) [Ru(tpy)(bpy)(H(2)O)-Ru(tpy)(tpy(PO(3)H(2)))](4+) (tpy = 2,2':6,2''-terpyridine; bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine) are reported. We characterize the electronic excitations, electron injection time scales, and interfacial electron transfer (IET) mechanisms through phosphonate anchoring groups. These are promising alternatives to the classic carboxylates of conventional dye-sensitized solar cells since they bind more strongly to TiO(2) surfaces and form stable covalent bonds that are unaffected by humidity. Density functional theory calculations and quantum dynamics simulations of IET indicate that electron injection in 1-TiO(2) can be up to 1 order of magnitude faster when 1 is attached to TiO(2) in a bidentate mode (tau approximately 60 fs) than when attached in a monodentate motif (tau approximately 460 fs). The IET time scale also depends strongly on the properties of the sensitizer as well as on the nature of the electronic excitation initially localized in the adsorbate molecule. We show that IET triggered by the visible light excitation of 2-TiO(2) takes 1-10 ps when 2 is attached in a bidentate mode, a time comparable to the lifetime of the excited electronic state. IET due to visible-light photoexcitation of 3-TiO(2) is slower, since the resulting electronic excitation remains localized in the tpy-tpy bridge that is weakly coupled to the electronic states of the conduction band of TiO(2). These results are particularly valuable to elucidate the possible origin of IET efficiency drops during photoconversion in solar cells based on Ru(II)-polypyridine complexes covalently attached to TiO(2) thin films with phosphonate linkers.

Mechanistic investigations into electrocatalytic nitrate reduction by a cobalt complex reveal the critical role played by the flexible, redox-active ligand.

Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) often utilize transition metal-based chromophores for light absorption and semiconductor sensitization. Ru(II)-based dyes are among the most commonly used sensitizers in DSSCs. As ruthenium is both expensive and rare, complexes based on cheaper and more abundant iron could serve as a good alternative. In this study, we investigate Fe(II)-bis(terpyridine) and its cyclometalated analogues, in which pyridine ligands are systematically replaced by aryl groups, as potential photosensitizers in DSSCs. We employ density functional theory at the B3LYP/6-31G*,SDD level to obtain the ground state electronic structure of these complexes. Quantum dynamics simulations are utilized to study interfacial electron transfer between the Fe(II) photosensitizers and a titanium dioxide semiconductor. We find that cyclometalation stabilizes the singlet ground state of these complexes by 8-19 kcal/mol but reduces the electron density on the carboxylic acid attached to the aryl ring. The results suggest that cyclometalation provides a feasible route to increasing the efficiency of Fe(II) photosensitizers but that care should be taken in choosing the substitution position for the semiconductor anchoring group.

Over the past two decades, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have become a viable and relatively cheap alternative to conventional crystalline silicon-based systems. At the heart of a DSSC is a wide band gap semiconductor, typically a TiO2 nanoparticle network, sensitized with a visible light absorbing chromophore. Ru(II)-polypyridines are often utilized as chromophores thanks to their chemical stability, long-lived metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) excited states, tunable redox potentials, and near perfect quantum efficiency of interfacial electron transfer (IET) into TiO2. More recently, coordination compounds based on first row transition metals, such as Fe(II)-polypyridines, gained some attention as potential sensitizers in DSSCs due to their low cost and abundance. While such complexes can in principle sensitize TiO2, they do so very inefficiently since their photoactive MLCT states undergo intersystem crossing (ISC) into low-lying metal-centered states on a subpicosecond time scale. Competition between the ultrafast ISC events and IET upon initial excitation of Fe(II)-polypyridines is the main obstacle to their utilization in DSSCs. Suitability of Fe(II)-polypyridines to serve as sensitizers could therefore be improved by adjusting relative rates of the ISC and IET processes, with the goal of making the IET more competitive with ISC. Our research program in computational inorganic chemistry utilizes a variety of tools based on density functional theory (DFT), time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) and quantum dynamics to investigate structure-property relationships in Fe(II)-polypyridines, specifically focusing on their function as chromophores. One of the difficult problems is the accurate determination of energy differences between electronic states with various spin multiplicities (i.e., (1)A, (1,3)MLCT, (3)T, (5)T) in the ISC cascade. We have shown that DFT is capable of predicting the trends in the energy ordering of these electronic states in a set of structurally related complexes with the help of appropriate benchmarks, based either on experimental data or higher-level ab initio calculations. Models based on TD-DFT and quantum dynamics approaches have proven very useful in understanding IET processes in Fe(II)-polypyridine-TiO2 assemblies. For example, they helped us to elucidate the origin of "band selective" sensitization in the [Fe(bpy-dca)2(CN)2]-TiO2 assembly (bpy-dca = 2,2'-bipyridine-4,4'-dicarboxylic acid), first observed by Ferrere and Gregg [ Ferrere , S. ; Gregg , B. A. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1998 , 120 , 843 . ]. They also shed light on the relationship between the linker group that anchors Fe(II)-polypyridines onto the TiO2 surface and the speed of IET in Fe(II)-polypyridine-TiO2 assemblies. More interestingly, our results show that the IET efficiency is strongly correlated with the amount of electron density on the linker group and that one can obtain insights into the IET in dye-semiconductor assemblies based on ground state electronic structure calculations alone. This ma...