AN EFFECTIVE CORE POTENTIAL STUDY OF TRANSITION-METAL CHALCOGENIDES .1. MOLECULAR-STRUCTURE

A structural analysis is reported of roughly 150 transition-metal (TM)-chalcogenido complexes in a variety of chemical environments. With few exceptions, agreement between calculated and experimental geometries is excellent. The research provides convincing evidence that computational methods employed are adequately describing the bonding in these diverse TM complexes. Interesting trends in relative TMCh (R(MCh')-R(MCh)) bond lengths are found, Experimental and computational data show that other than the zirconocene- and hafnocene-oxos there is similar behavior in relative bond lengths for widely varying TM-chalcogenido complexes, Relative bond lengths versus oxo (S-O, Se-O, and Te-O) in group IVB metallocenes tend to be larger than for other families of complexes and show less variation among the heavier chalcogens (Se-S, Te-S, and Te-Se). Analysis of localized wave functions for Cp(2)ZrCh point to a greater contribution from a singly-bonded Zr-Ch structure (relative to Zr=Ch) when Ch is O compared to heavier chalcogens. Taken together, the data suggest that there is a fundamental difference in the Zr-oxo (and Hf-oxo) bond in relation to heavier chalcogens, consistent with recent experimental data. In previous studies of multiply bonded TM complexes we have focused on the ability of ECPs to make computations feasible for complexes incorporating even the heaviest transition metals. The present work also evaluates ECP methods for heavier main group (MG)elements. The chalcogens (Ch) O, S, Se, and Te are included in this study.