Journal of Physical Chemistry A, Vol.111, No.39, 9978-9987, 2007
Computation of pK(a) values of substituted aniline radical cations in dimethylsulfoxide solution
A newly developed computation strategy was used to calculate the absolute pK(a) values of 18 substituted aniline radical cations in dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) solution with the error origin elucidated and deviation minimized. The B3LYP/6-311++G(2df,2p) method was applied and was found to be capable of reproducing the gas-phase proton-transfer free energies of substituted anilines with a precision of 0.83 kcal/mol. The IEF-PCM solvation model with gas-phase optimized structures was adopted in calculating the pK(a) values of the substituted neutral anilines in DMSO, regenerating the experimental results within a standard deviation of 0.4 pK(a) unit. When the IEF-PCM solvation model was applied to calculate the standard redox potentials of anilide anions, it showed that the computed values agreed well with experiment, but the redox potentials of substituted anilines were systematically overestimated by 0.304 eV. The cause of this deviation was found to be related to the inaccuracy of the calculated solvation free energies of aniline radical cations. By adjusting the size of the cavity in the IEF-PCM method, we derived a reliable procedure that can reproduce the experimental pK(a) values of aniline radical cations within 1.2 pK(a) units to those from experiment.