Absolute Configuration Determination with Electronically Enhanced Vibrational Circular Dichroism

Intensity enhancement in vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) arises in open-shell transition metal complexes from coupling between ground-state vibrational transitions and magnetic dipole-allowed transitions to low-lying excited states (LLESs). In this work, we apply Nafie's vibronic coupling theory to Me(II)-(-)-sparteine- ${\mathrm{Cl}}_2$ (Me = Zn, Co, Ni) complexes to investigate these enhancement effects. We show that the VCD intensity is extremely sensitive to the excitation energies that neither time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) nor state-averaged complete active space self-consistent field (SA-CASSCF) calculations can predict with sufficient accuracy. We argue that instead of using more accurate quantum chemistry methods these excitation energies can be treated as parameters and optimized against experimental spectra. With this approach, we obtain simulated VCD similarity scores above 0.4, a threshold considered reliable for absolute configuration assignment. The ability to quantitatively reproduce enhanced experimental spectra with computations opens up new research areas, offering amongst else unique possibilities for the study of the chiral structure of systems such as transition metal complexes and metalloproteins that so far have remained intractable.