DFT benchmark study of the O–O bond dissociation energy in peroxides validated with high-level ab initio calculations

Abstract

Peroxides play a central role in many chemical and biological processes such as the Fenton reaction. The relevance of these compounds lies in the low stability of the O–O bond which upon dissociation results in radical species able to initiate various chemical or biological processes. In this work, a set of 64 DFT functional-basis set combinations has been validated in terms of their capability to describe bond dissociation energies (BDE) for the O–O bond in a database of 14 ROOH peroxides for which experimental values of BDE are available. Moreover, the electronic contributions to the BDE were obtained for four of the peroxides and the anion $$\hbox {H}_2\hbox {O}_2^-$$ at the CBS limit at CCSD(T) level with Dunning’s basis sets up to triple- $$\zeta$$ quality providing a reference value for the hydrogen peroxide anion as a model. Almost all the functionals considered here yielded mean absolute deviations around $$5.0\hbox { kcal mol}^{-1}$$ . The smallest values were observed for the $$\omega$$ B97 family and the Minnesota M11 functional with a marked basis set dependence. Despite the mean deviation, order relations among BDE experimental values of peroxides were also considered. The $$\omega$$ B97 family was able to reproduce the relations correctly whereas other functionals presented a marked dependence on the chemical nature of the R group. Interestingly, M11 functional did not show a very good agreement with the established order despite its good performance in the mean error. The obtained results support the use of similar validation strategies for proper prediction of BDE or other molecular properties by DFT methods in subsequent related studies.