Coupled Cluster and Density Functional Theory Calculations of Atomic Hydrogen Chemisorption on Pyrene and Coronene as Model Systems for Graphene Hydrogenation

Ab initio coupled cluster and density functional theory studies of atomic hydrogen addition to the central region of pyrene and coronene as molecular models for graphene hydrogenation were performed. Fully relaxed potential energy curves (PECs) were computed at the spin-unrestricted B3LYP/cc-pVDZ level of theory for the atomic hydrogen attack of a center carbon atom (site A), the midpoint of a neighboring carbon bond (site B), and the center of a central hexagon (site C). Using the B3LYP/cc-pVDZ PEC geometries, we evaluated energies at the PBE density functional, as well as ab initio restricted open-shell ROMP2, ROCCSD, and ROCCSD(T) levels of theory, employing cc-pVDZ and cc-pVTZ basis sets, and performed a G2MS extrapolation to the ROCCSD(T)/cc-pVTZ level of theory. In agreement with earlier studies, we find that only site A attack leads to chemisorption. The G2MS entrance channel barrier heights, binding energies, and PEC profiles are found to agree well with a recent ab initio multireference wave function theory study (Bonfanti et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2011, 135, 164701), indicating that single-reference open-shell methods including B3LYP are sufficient for the theoretical treatment of the interaction of graphene with a single hydrogen atom.