Chemical bonding in phosphane and amine complexes of main group elements and transition metals

The geometries and bond dissociation energies of the main group complexes X3B-NX3, X3B-PX3, X3Al-NX3, and X3Al-PX3 (X = H, Me, Cl) and the transition metal complexes (CO)5M-NX3 and (CO)5M-PX3 (M = Cr, Mo, W) have been calculated using gradient-corrected density functional theory at the BP86/TZ2P level. The nature of the donor-acceptor bonds was investigated with an energy decomposition analysis. It is found that the bond dissociation energy is not a good measure for the intrinsic strength of Lewis acidity and basicity because the preparation energies of the fragments may significantly change the trend of the bond strength. The interaction energies between the frozen fragments of the borane complexes are in most cases larger than the interaction energies of the alane complexes. The bond dissociation energy of the alane complexes is sometimes higher than that of the borane analogues because the energy for distorting the planar equilibrium geometry of BX3 to the pyramidal from in the complexes is higher than for AlX3. Inspection of the three energy terms, DeltaE(Pauli), DeltaE(orb), and DeltaE(elstat), shows that all three of them must be considered to understand the trends of the Lewis acid and base strength. The orbital term of the donor-acceptor bonds with the Lewis bases NCl3 and PCl3 have a higher pi character than the bonds of EH3 and EMe3, but NCl3 and PCl3 are weaker Lewis bases because the lone-pair orbital at the donor atoms N and P has a high percent s character. The calculated DeltaE(int) values suggest that the trends of the intrinsic Lewis bases' strengths in the main-group complexes with BX3 and AlX3 are NMe3 > NH3 > NCl3 and PMe3 > PH3 > PCl3. The transition metal complexes exhibit a somewhat different order with NH3 > NMe3 > NCl3 and PMe3 > PH3 > PCl3. The slightly weaker bonding of NMe3 than that of NH3 comes from stronger Pauli repulsion. The bond length does not always correlate with the bond dissociation energy, nor does it always correlate with the intrinsic interaction energy.