The Relativistic Effects on the Carbon-Carbon Coupling Constants Mediated by a Heavy Atom

The (2)J(CC), (3)J(CC), and (4)J(CC) spin-spin coupling constants in the systems with a heavy atom (Cd, In, Sn, Sb, Te, Hg, Tl, Pb, Bi, and Po) in the coupling path have been calculated by means of density functional theory. The main goal was to estimate the relativistic effects on spin-spin coupling constants and to explore the factors which may influence them, including the nature of the heavy atom and carbon hybridization. The methods applied range, in order of reduced complexity, from the Dirac-Kohn-Sham (DKS) method (density functional theory with four-component Dirac-Coulomb Hamiltonian), through DFT with two- and one-component zeroth-order regular approximation (ZORA) Hamiltonians, to scalar effective core potentials (ECPs) with the nonrelativistic Hamiltonian. The use of DKS and ZORA methods leads to very similar results, and small-core ECPs of the MDF and MWB variety reproduce correctly the scalar relativistic effects. Scalar relativistic effects usually are larger than the spin-orbit coupling effects. The latter tend to influence the most the coupling constants of the sp(3)-hybridized carbon atoms and in compounds of the p-block heavy atoms. Large spin-orbit coupling contributions for the Po compounds are probably connected with the inverse of the lowest triplet excitation energy.