THEORETICAL STUDIES ON HEATS OF FORMATION FOR SOME THIOL COMPOUNDS BY DENSITY FUNCTIONAL THEORY AND CBS-Q METHOD

Abstract

The heats of formation (HOFs) for 15 thiol compounds are calculated by employing the hybrid density functional theory (B3LYP, B3PW91, B3P86) methods with 6-311G** basis set and the complete basis set (CBS-Q) method. It is demonstrated that the B3P86 and CBS-Q methods are accurate to compute the reliable HOFs for thiol compounds. In order to test whether the B3P86 method has a low basis set sensitivity, the HOFs for six thiol compounds are also calculated by using the B3P86 method with 6-31+G*, 6-31+G**, and 6-311+G** basis sets for comparison. We also extend our study by employing the nonlocal BLYP method together with 6-31+G* basis set to calculate the HOFs for thiol compounds. The obtained results are compared with the experimental results. It is noted that the B3P86 method is not sensitive to the basis sets. Considering the inevitably computational cost of CBS-Q method and the reliability of the B3P86 calculation, the B3P86 method with a moderate or a larger basis set such as 6-311G** and 6-311+G** may be more suitable to calculate the HOFs of thiol compounds. In addition, we believe that the maximum error associated with the calculated HOFs is less than 6 kcal/mol for the B3P86/6-311G** method and it is expected that the error bar is more likely 1–5 kcal/mol for the HOFs of thiol compounds.