Post-CCSD(T) Thermochemistry of Chlorine Fluorides as a Challenging Test Case for Evaluating Density Functional Theory and Composite Ab Initio Methods.

Abstract

Quantum chemistry plays a key role in exploring the chemical properties of highly reactive chlorine polyfluorides compounds (ClFn). Here, we investigate the thermochemical properties of ClFn species (n = 2-6) by means of high-level thermochemical procedures approximating the CCSDT(Q) and CCSDTQ5 energies at the complete basis set limit. We consider total atomization energies (TAEs), Cl-F bond dissociation energies (BDEs), F2 elimination energies (F2 elim.), ionization potentials (IPs), and electron affinities (EAs). The TAEs have significant contributions from post-CCSD(T) correlation effects. The higher-order triple excitations, CCSDT-CCSD(T), are negative and amount to -0.338 (ClF2), -0.727 (ClF3), -0.903 (ClF4), -1.335 (ClF5), and -1.946 (ClF6) kcal/mol. However, the contributions from quadruple (and, where available, also quintuple) excitations are much larger and positive and amount to +1.335 (ClF2), +1.387 (ClF3), +2.367 (ClF4), +2.399 (ClF5), and +3.432 (ClF6) kcal/mol. Thus, the contributions from post-CCSD(T) excitations exceed the threshold of chemical accuracy in nearly all cases. Due to their increasing hyper-valency and multireference character, the ClFn series provides an interesting and challenging test case for both density functional theory and low-level composite ab initio procedures. Here, we highlight the limitations in achieving overall chemical accuracy across all DFT and most composite ab initio procedures.