Vibrational modeling of copper-histamine complexes: metal-ligand IR modes investigation

Recent reports on proteins and related models show that vibrational spectroscopy in the far-infrared domain is a promising technique to characterize metal sphere coordination in proteins. The low-frequency modes are however complex, and there is a need to develop the analysis of metal sites by means of quantum chemical calculations as a support for useful interpretation of the far-IR data. In this study, we determined vibrational properties for systems containing Cu(II)-N(Imidazole) interactions present in many biological complexes by means of quantum chemical calculations and confronted the normal mode description with available experimental data. Analysis of the [Cu(histamine)]2+ complex led us to conclude that the anharmonic contributions are negligible in the far-IR domain. Geometry optimizations and vibrational frequency calculations of [Cu(hm)]2+ and [Cu(hm)2(ClO4)2] complexes were compared using various hybrid DFT functionals and basis sets. These investigations stressed the need of potential energy distribution calculations (PED) to assign the vibrational modes, to obtain an overall description of the vibration modes, and to efficiently compare the methods. Comparison of calculation methods with the B3LYP/6-31+G(d,p) and B3LYP/6-311+G(2d,2p) methods and with available experimental data showed that the B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level of theory provides accurate predictions of the normal mode frequencies and assignments. These comparisons also enlighten that theoretical investigations of 2H- and 65Cu-labeled [Cu(hm)2(ClO4)2] complexes give with a very good accuracy the band shifts of the labeled copper-histamine derivatives. The theoretical calculations combined with experimental data allowed us to predict and calculate with good accuracy the values and assignments of the low-frequency IR modes, notably those involving metal contribution.