Ring-opening radical clock reactions: many density functionals have difficulty keeping time

Abstract

The ability of several density-functional theory methods to describe the kinetics and energetics of a series of ring-opening reactions of cyclopropyl and cyclobutyl-type radicals was explored. PBE, B971 and B3LYP perform quite well in their ability to replicate experiment, based upon the ring opening of cyclopropylcarbinyl, two α-trialkylsilyloxycyclopropylmethyl radicals, pentamethylcyclopropylcarbinyl, cyclobutylcarbinyl and 1-cyclobutylethylcarbinyl. The other functionals tested, which includes BLYP, CAM-B3LYP, BHandHLYP, B2PLYP and B2PLYP-D, as well as functionals designed for kinetics applications, namely MPW1K, BMK and M06-2X, all perform poorly. The latter of these functionals display some integration grid dependencies.