Transition-metal oxyhydrides are of considerable current interest due to the unique features of the hydride anion, most notably the absence of valence p orbitals. This feature distinguishes hydrides from all other anions, and gives rise to unprecedented properties in this new class of materials. Here we show via a high-pressure study of anion-ordered strontium vanadium oxyhydride SrVO2H that H− is extraordinarily compressible, and that pressure drives a transition from a Mott insulator to a metal at ~ 50 GPa. Density functional theory suggests that the band gap in the insulating state is reduced by pressure as a result of increased dispersion in the ab-plane due to enhanced Vdπ-Opπ-Vdπ overlap. Remarkably, dispersion along c is limited by the orthogonal Vdπ-H1s-Vdπ arrangement despite the greater c-axis compressibility, suggesting that the hydride anions act as π-blockers. The wider family of oxyhydrides may therefore give access to dimensionally reduced structures with novel electronic properties.

We investigate the importance of relativistic effects on NMR shielding constants and chemical shifts of linear HgL(2) (L = Cl, Br, I, CH(3)) compounds using three different relativistic methods: the fully relativistic four-component approach and the two-component approximations, linear response elimination of small component (LR-ESC) and zeroth-order regular approximation (ZORA). LR-ESC reproduces successfully the four-component results for the C shielding constant in Hg(CH(3))(2) within 6 ppm, but fails to reproduce the Hg shielding constants and chemical shifts. The latter is mainly due to an underestimation of the change in spin-orbit contribution. Even though ZORA underestimates the absolute Hg NMR shielding constants by ∼2100 ppm, the differences between Hg chemical shift values obtained using ZORA and the four-component approach without spin-density contribution to the exchange-correlation (XC) kernel are less than 60 ppm for all compounds using three different functionals, BP86, B3LYP, and PBE0. However, larger deviations (up to 366 ppm) occur for Hg chemical shifts in HgBr(2) and HgI(2) when ZORA results are compared with four-component calculations with non-collinear spin-density contribution to the XC kernel. For the ZORA calculations it is necessary to use large basis sets (QZ4P) and the TZ2P basis set may give errors of ∼500 ppm for the Hg chemical shifts, despite deceivingly good agreement with experimental data. A Gaussian nucleus model for the Coulomb potential reduces the Hg shielding constants by ∼100-500 ppm and the Hg chemical shifts by 1-143 ppm compared to the point nucleus model depending on the atomic number Z of the coordinating atom and the level of theory. The effect on the shielding constants of the lighter nuclei (C, Cl, Br, I) is, however, negligible.

We investigate the magnitude and interplay of relativistic and electron correlation effects on the electric field gradient (EFG) at the position of Hg in linear and bent HgL(2) (L = CH(3), Cl, Br, I) and trigonal planar [HgCl(3)](-) compounds using four-component relativistic Dirac-Coulomb (DC) and non-relativistic (NR) calculations at the Hartree-Fock (HF), DFT, MP2 and coupled cluster (CC) levels. The relativistic and electron correlation contributions to EFG have opposite signs and are not additive, demonstrating the importance of taking into account relativistic and electron correlation contributions on an equal footing. DC-MP2 overestimates the electron correlation correction by 0.48-0.56 a.u. for Hg-halides and by 0.8 a.u. for Hg(CH(3))(2), respectively, while DC-CCSD underestimates the correlation correction by 0.57-0.66 a.u. compared to the reference DC-CCSD-T data. EFGs obtained at the DC-DFT level vary considerably with the functional; DC-CAMB3LYP and DC-BH&H reproduce DC-CCSD-T results within 0.08-0.24 a.u. (1%-3%) for Hg(CH(3))(2) and Hg-halides, respectively. An updated value of the nuclear quadrupole moment of the I = 5/2 excited state of (199)Hg, Q((199)Hg) = 0.675(12) b is derived from the literature. This value compares well with that derived from our calculated EFG at the DC-CCSD-T level and the experimental data for Hg(CH(3))(2); Q((199)Hg) = 0.650 b.

The structural chemistry of the title clusters has been the source of controversy in the computational literature because the identity of the most stable structure appears to be pathologically dependent on the chosen theoretical model. The candidate structures include a D-symmetric 'fullerene-like' isomer with 3-connected vertices (A), an 'arachno' architecture (B) and an octahedral isomer with high vertex connectivities typical of 'closo' electron-deficient clusters (C). The key to understanding these apparently very different structures is the fact that they make use of the limited electron density available from the endohedral metal in very different ways. Early in the transition series the favoured structure is the one that maximises transfer of electron density from the electropositive metal to the cage whereas for later metals it is the one that minimises repulsions with the increasingly core-like d electrons. The varying role of the d electrons across the transition series leads directly to strong functional dependency, and hence to the controversy in the literature.

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