Would the pseudocoordination centre method be appropriate to describe the geometries of lanthanide complexes?

The correct prediction of the ground-state geometries of lanthanide complexes is an important step in the development of efficient light conversion molecular devices (LCMD). Considering this, we evaluate here the capability of semiempirical approaches and ab initio effective core potential (ECP) methodology in reproducing the coordination polyhedron geometries of lanthanide complexes. Initially, we compare the facility of two semiempirical approaches: Pseudocoordination centre method (PCC) and Sparkle model. In the first step, we considered only high-quality crystallographic structures and included 633 complexes, and in the last step, we compare the capability of two semiempirical approaches with ab initio/ECP calculations. Because this last methodology was found to be computationally very demanding, we further used a subset containing 91 high-quality crystallographic structures. A total of 91 ab initio full geometry optimizations were performed. Our results suggest that only the semiempirical Sparkle model (hundreds of times faster) present accuracy similar to what can be obtained by present-day ab initio/ECP full geometry optimization calculations on such lanthanide complexes. In addition, it further indicates that the PCC approach has a poor prediction related to the coordination polyhedron geometries of lanthanide complexes.