Performance of Density Functionals for Activation Energies of Zr-Mediated Reactions

Coupled cluster CCSD(T) calculations with core–valence correlation and complete basis set (CBS) limit extrapolation are used to benchmark the performance of commonly used density functionals in computing energy barriers for Zr-mediated reactions involving zirconocene species. These reactions include (a) insertions of the Zr–H bond of Cp2Zr(H)Cl into C═C, C≡C, and C═O bonds and (b) C–H activations by Zr═N bond in Cp2Zr═NH. The best performing functionals are M06-L, M06, and M06-2X in the M06 series, all having mean unsigned deviations (MUD) less than 2 kcal/mol. The worst performing functional is OLYP, with a distinctly large MUD of more than 10 kcal/mol. Considering also the trends in barrier heights and the systematic barrier height deviation, our best recommended functional is M06-2X. In this work, DFT empirical dispersion correction (DFT-D3) is found to improve the performance of barrier height values for most functionals (especially of OLYP and B3LYP). With DFT empirical dispersion correction, we also recommend M06-2X for reaction barrier calculations of Zr-mediated reactions.