THE MODELING OF NUCLEOPHILIC AND ELECTROPHILIC ADDITIONS AND SUBSTITUTIONS USING EXTENDED HUCKEL-BASED REACTION POTENTIALS

A new formalism has been developed in order to evaluate intermolecular interaction energies for organometallic complexes including electrostatic, polarization, and orbital contributions based on extended Huckel molecular orbital (EHMO) theory. The electrostatic interaction is evaluated using (i) a multipolar expansion of EHMO charge density, or (ii) by calculating directly the electrostatic integrals in the basis of atomic orbitals. The polarization effects are evaluated by introducing a perturbation into the Hamiltonian. The orbital interaction is calculated by considering a supermolecule made of the organometallic substrate and a model electrophile or nucleophile. To provide the shortest possible response time on an interactive computer graphics facility, this model should require the minimum amount of computer time, which explains why approximate procedures are used to evaluate the dominant contributions to the interaction energies. Preliminary results show that these interaction energies lead to reaction potentials in good agreement with experiment for a broad series of nucleophilic and electrophilic addition or substitution reactions involving organometallic complexes. In addition, it is shown that the method can easily be extended for the calculation of solvent effects. To this end, developments considering the supermolecule surrounded by a polarizable continuum are in progress.