Comparative computational and experimental study on the thermochemistry of the chloropyrimidines

The standard (p0 = 0.1 MPa) molar enthalpies of formation, Delta fH(0)(M), for liquid 2,4,6-trichloropyrimidine and for crystalline 2-chloropyrimidine, 2,4- and 4,6-dichloropyrimidine, and 2,4,5,6-tetrachloropyrimidine compounds were determined at T = 298.15 K by rotating-bomb combustion calorimetry. The standard molar enthalpies of vaporization or sublimation, Delta (g)(cr,l) H(0)(M), of these compounds at T = 298.15 K were determined by Calvet microcalorimetry. The experimental standard molar enthalpies of formation of those compounds, in the gaseous state, at T = 298.15 K, were thus obtained by combining these two sets of results. The latter values have been employed in the calibration of the computational procedure, which has been used to estimate the gas-phase enthalpies of formation for the other chloropyrimidines that were not possible to obtain in a pure form for the experimental study. It is found that the exchange-correlation functional based on the local spin density approximation (LSDA) seems to be a cheap choice for the estimation of enthalpies of formation for heterocycles containing nitrogen atoms; the well-known B3LYP hybrid method yields larger differences, with respect to the experimental values, for 2,4,6-tri- and 2,4,5,6-tetrachloropyrimidines.