Nonadditive effects of polysubstitution in CH4 and CH3: a test of abinitio and semiempirical MO methods

Abstract

The effects to the bond lengths and molecular energy of making multiple substitutions at the same carbon atom in methane and the methyl free radical are studied using various molecular orbital methods. All abinitio calculations were based upon the Hartree–Fock formalism (unrestricted in the case of free radicals) and employed the STO-3G (with d orbitals on chlorine), 3-21G, and 4-31G bases, the last both with and without a set of Gaussian d orbitals on the carbon. The semiempirical methods used were the MINDO/3 and MNDO methods of Dewar and co-workers; computations for polysubstituted ethanes by these two methods also arc reported. The abinito methods which use a split valence shell basis set account very well for the trends in bond lengths and heats of formation, at least when the polysubstituent is fluorine or hydroxyl. In contrast, the semiempirical calculations and the abinitio STO-3G results gave very poor results. Finally, the role of interactions between the AH bonds in a variety of hydrides AHn is illustrated using experimental energetics.