Effect of hydrogen atoms on the structures of trinuclear metal carbonyl clusters: trinuclear manganese carbonyl hydrides.

The structures of the trinuclear manganese carbonyl hydrides H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(n) (n = 12, 11, 10, 9) have been investigated by density functional theory (DFT). Optimization of H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(12) gives the experimentally known structure in which all carbonyl groups are terminal and each edge of a central Mn(3) equilateral triangle is bridged by a single hydrogen atom. This structure establishes the canonical distance 3.11 A for the Mn-Mn single bond satisfying the 18-electron rule. The central triangular (mu-H)(3)Mn(3) unit is retained in the lowest energy structure of H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(11), which may thus be derived from the H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(12) structure by removal of a carbonyl group with concurrent conversion of one of the remaining carbonyl groups into a semibridging carbonyl group to fill the resulting hole. The potential energy surface of H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(10) is relatively complicated with six singlet and five triplet structures. One of the lower energy H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(10) structures has one of the hydrogen atoms bridging the entire Mn(3) triangle and the other two hydrogen atoms bridging Mn-Mn edges. This H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(10) structure achieves the favored 18-electron configuration with a very short MnMn triple bond of 2.36 A. The other low energy H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(10) structure retains the (mu-H)(3)Mn(3) core of H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(12) but has a unique six-electron donor eta(2)-mu(3) carbonyl group bridging the entire Mn(3) triangle similar to the unique carbonyl group in the known compound Cp(3)Nb(3)(CO)(6)(eta(2)-mu(3)-CO). For H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(9) a structure with a central (mu(3)-H)(2)Mn(3) trigonal bipyramid lies >20 kcal/mol below any of the other structures. Triplet structures were found for the unsaturated H(3)Mn(3)(CO)(n) (n = 11, 10, 9) systems but at significantly higher energies than the lowest lying singlet structures.