Development of a universal method for vibrational analysis of the terminal alkyne C≡C stretch

The terminal alkyne C≡C stretch has a large Raman scattering cross section in the "silent" region for biomolecules. This has led to many Raman tag and probe studies using this moiety to study biomolecular systems. A computational investigation of these systems is vital to aid in the interpretation of these results. In this work, we develop a method for computing terminal alkyne vibrational frequencies and isotropic transition polarizabilities that can easily and accurately be applied to any terminal alkyne molecule. We apply the discrete variable representation method to a localized version of the C≡C stretch normal mode. The errors of (1) vibrational localization to the terminal alkyne moiety, (2) anharmonic normal mode isolation, and (3) discretization of the Born-Oppenheimer potential energy surface are quantified and found to be generally small and cancel each other. This results in a method with low error compared to other anharmonic vibrational methods like second-order vibrational perturbation theory and to experiments. Several density functionals are tested using the method, and TPSS-D3, an inexpensive nonempirical density functional with dispersion corrections, is found to perform surprisingly well. Diffuse basis functions are found to be important for the accuracy of computed frequencies. Finally, the computation of vibrational properties like isotropic transition polarizabilities and the universality of the localized normal mode for terminal alkynes are demonstrated.