DFT investigation of the 1-octene metathesis reaction mechanism with the Phobcat precatalyst

Recent application of calculations of metal complexes based on density functional theory

Recent application of density functional theory (DFT) for metal complexes is reviewed to show the achievements of DFT and the challenges for it, as well as the methods for selecting proper functionals.

A comparison of low and high activity precatalysts: do the calculated energy barriers during the self-metathesis reaction of 1-octene correlate with the precatalyst metathesis activity?

The self-metathesis reaction of 1-octene with several well-known Grubbs-type precatalysts and the new Z-selective Grubbs precatalyst were studied with molecular modeling. The obtained Gibbs-free energy values for all the steps during the productive metathesis of 1-octene were compared to the values obtained for some low catalytic activity precatalysts. Determining how the Gibbs-free energy values of highly active precatalysts compare to that of low catalytic activity precatalysts gave a deeper insight into the mechanism. The questionable correlation of the theoretically observed trends with those obtained experimentally does point to the need to be very cautious when making assumptions from theoretical results without a sufficiently large dataset.

A molecular modeling study of the changes of some steric properties of the precatalysts during the olefin metathesis reaction

The productive self-metathesis of 1-octene with a series of new phosphine ligated Grubbs-type precatalysts was studied. The resulting structures were used to compare some steric properties of the new precatalysts with those of well-known precatalysts. The possibility of α-CC agnostic stabilization as well as the ability of the ligands to shield the metal was studied. A comparison of the obtained data, pointed to the unlikelihood that α-CC agostic stabilization is a major contribution to the stabilization of the various metallacyclobutane rings. The similarity in the ability of the ligands to shield the metal also raised questions about the comparison of experimentally observed trends with those obtained theoretically.