Performance of density functionals for calculation of reductive ring-opening reaction energies of Li+-EC and Li+-VC

Reaction energies were determined for reductive ring-opening reactions of Li+-coordinated ethylene carbonate (EC) and vinylene carbonate (VC) by using various density functional theory (DFT) and ab-initio methods applying the basis sets up to Dunning's aug-cc-pVQZ. The methods examined include the local density functional (SVWN), the pure gradient-corrected density functionals (BLYP and BPW91), and the hybrid density functionals (B3LYP, B1LYP, B3PW91, and mPW1PW91). Comparison of the DFT results with ab-initio results indicates that the mPW1PW91 approach introduced by Adamo and Barone, is superior to all the other DFT methods (including B3LYP). The performance of more cost-effective Pople-type basis sets ranging from 6-31G(d,p) to 6-311++G(3df,3pd) was assessed at DFT levels of theory by calibrating them with the aug-cc-pVQZ results.