Absolute calculations of acidity of C-substituted tetrazoles in solution

The CBS-QB3 method was used to calculate the gas-phase free energy difference between nine tetrazole derivatives and their anions, and the DPCM and CPCM continuum solvation methods were applied to calculate the free energy differences of solvation. The calculations were performed on both gas-phase and solvent-phase optimized structures. Absolute pK(a) calculations using the CPCM method and the gas-phase optimized structures yielded mean unsigned error of 0.4 pK(a) unit. The calculations were made with the routine settings implemented in Gaussian 98. The study is as accurate as the best reported so far for six carboxylic acids and phenols and, to our knowledge, the best reported for the acidities of heterocyclic compounds in solution.