Calculation of relative energies of permethylated oligosilane conformers in vapor and in alkane solution.

The geometries of 35 conformers of Me(SiMe2)nMe (n = 4, 1; n = 5, 2; n = 6, 3; n = 7, 4) were optimized at the MP2/VTDZ level, and CCSD(T) single-point calculations were done at three MP2/VTDZ conformer geometries of 1. The relative ground-state energies of the conformers of 1-4 in the gas phase were obtained from the MP2/VTDZ electronic energy, zero-point vibrational energy, and thermal corrections at 0, 77, and 298 K. Relative energies in an alkane solvent at 77 and 298 K were obtained by the addition of solvation energies, obtained from the SM5.42R model. The calculated energies of 26 of the conformers (n = 4-6) have been least-squares fitted to a set of 15 additive increments associated with each Si-Si bond conformation and each pair of adjacent bond conformations, with mean deviations of 0.06-0.20 kcal/mol. An even better fit for the energies of 24 conformers (mean deviations, 0.01-0.09 kcal/mol) has been obtained with a larger set of 19 increments, which also contained contributions from selected combinations of conformations of three adjacent bonds. The utility of the additive increments for the prediction of relative conformer energies in the gas phase and in solution has been tested on the remaining nine conformers (n = 6, 7). With the improved increment set, the average deviation from the SM5.42R//MP2 results for solvated conformers at 298 K was 0.18 kcal/mol, and the maximum error was 0.98 kcal/mol.