London Dispersion Decisively Contributes to the Thermodynamic Stability of Bulky NHC-Coordinated Main Group Compounds

We evaluated the dispersion stabilization of a series of seemingly reactive main group compounds coordinated to bulky N-heterocyclic carbene ligands. We computed the thermochemistry of hypothetical isodesmic exchange reactions of these ligands with their unsubstituted parent systems employing the B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) level of theory with and without dispersion corrections. The energy difference between these two approaches gave dispersion corrections of 30 kcal mol(-1) and more. We therefore conclude that London dispersion contributes critically to the thermodynamic stabilities of these compounds. As such, these core-shell structures undergo reactions of the reactive core as long as the dispersion stabilization is conserved.