Ab initio study of the influence of structural parameters on the potential energy surfaces of spin-crossover Fe(II)...

In spin-crossover (SCO) compounds exhibiting a light induced excited spin state trapping (LIESST) effect, the thermodynamic T(1∕2) and kinetic T(LIESST) temperature values depend on the features of the potential energy surfaces (PES) of the two lowest singlet and quintet states but also on vibrational contributions, collective effects, such as electrostatics, for instance, spin-orbit couplings to a lesser extent, etc. In this work, the question of the link between the shape of the PES of SCO compounds exhibiting a LIESST effect and their first coordination sphere structure is addressed from wave function theory based ab initio calculations. Fe(II) complexes based on model ligands suited to reproduce the main characteristics of the PES of such compounds are distorted to emphasize selectively the role played by the metal-ligand distances and the ligand-metal-ligand angles. The studied angular deformations are those usually observed in many Fe(L)(2)(NCS)(2) complexes. It is shown that the larger the deformation between the low spin and high spin equilibrium geometries, the higher the energy barrier from the high spin state and the weaker the energy difference between the bottom of the wells. These results corroborate observations made by experimentalists on a large number of complexes. While the PES features only constitutes one of the contributions to these temperatures, it is worth noticing that, relating T(1∕2) to the energy difference between the bottoms of the singlet and quintet wells and the T(LIESST) to the energy barrier from the quintet bottom well, the same slope of the empirical law T(LIESST) = -0.3T(1∕2)+T(0) is observed.