Systematic Investigation of the Catalytic Cycle of a Single Site Ruthenium Oxygen Evolving Complex Using Density Functional Theory

The mechanism of water oxidation by a single site ruthenium oxygen evolving complex is investigated using fully unrestricted pseudospectral B3LYP with the effective core potential LACV3P in continuum solvent with some quantum mechanical waters. Guess wave functions have been used that allow greater flexibility in sampling different electronic configurations of the complex. Systematic comparison with experiment is improved using these guesses because they provide a complete analysis of the low energy manifold and help to alleviate the formal disconnect between theory and experiment in assigning Lewis structures for transition metal complexes. In agreement with results from the literature, the challenging 4(e-) and 4H(+) oxidation of water is accomplished using a mechanism that features three proton coupled electron transfers, one electron transfer, one atom proton transfer (APT), and one ligand exchange (LE). Calculations on a large database of ruthenium complexes allows us to benchmark the computation of reduction half potentials and free energies of activation and to investigate systematic ligand variations and their effect on the reaction mechanism. Mean unsigned errors of reduction half potentials in comparison to experiment are generally small (100-200 mV). The APT and LE steps are found to be rate limiting with free energy barriers of 19.27 and 19.53 kcal/mol respectively, which is in excellent agreement with the similar to 20 kcal/mol barrier obtained from experimental rate constants using classical transition state theory.