Structures and thermochemistry of calcium-containing molecules

A variety of theoretical procedures, including the high-level ab initio methods G3, G3[CC](dir,full), and W2C//ACQ, have been used to predict the structures and heats of formation of several small calcium-containing molecules (CaH, CaH2, CaO, CaOH, Ca(OH)2, CaF, CaF2, CaS, CaCl, and CaCl2). B3-LYP and CCSD(T) with both the (aug-)cc-pWCVQZ and (aug-)cc-pWCVQ+dZ basis sets are found to give molecular geometries that agree well with the experimental results. The CCSD(T)(riv)/(aug-)cc-pWCVQ+dZ results are found to be the most accurate, with a mean absolute deviation from experiment of just 0.008 angstroms. Zero-point vibrational energies (ZPVEs) and thermochemical corrections are found to be relatively insensitive to the level of theory, except in the case of molecules with highly anharmonic calcium-centered bending modes (CaH2, Ca(OH)2, CaF2, CaCl2), where special procedures need to be employed in order to obtain satisfactory results. Several potential improvements to the W2C method were investigated, most of which do not produce significant changes in the heats of formation. It was observed, however, that for CaO and CaS the scalar relativistic corrections are unexpectedly large and highly basis set dependent. In these cases, Douglas-Kroll CCSD(T)/(aug-)cc-pWCV5Z calculations appear to give a converged result. The G3[CC](dir,full) and best W2C-type heats of formation are both found generally to agree well with experimental values recommended in recent critical compendia. However, in some cases (CaO, Ca(OH)2, and CaF2), they differ from one another by more than their predicted error margins. The available experimental data are not sufficiently precise to distinguish definitively between the two sets of results although, in general, when discrepancies exist the W2C heats of formation are lower in energy and tend to be in better agreement with experiment. In the case of CaO, the W2C heat of formation (20.7 kJ mol(-1)) is approximately 20 kJ mol(-1) lower than the G3[CC](dir, full) result and most of the experimental data. Extensive investigation of possible refinements of the W2C method has failed to reveal any weaknesses that could account for this discrepancy. We therefore believe that the heat of formation of CaO is likely to lie closer to the more recent direct experimental determination of 27 kJ mol(-1) than to the value of approximately 40 kJ mol(-1) recommended in recent thermochemical reviews.