Bond dissociation energies of solvated silver(I)-amide complexes: competitive threshold collision-induced dissociations and calculations.

Using competitive threshold collision-induced dissociation (TCID) measurements, experimental bond dissociation energies have been evaluated for the water, methanol, and acetonitrile adducts of silver(I)-amide complexes. The influence of the solvent molecules on the binding energy of silver(I) to acetamide, N-methylacetamide, and N,N-dimethylacetamide was investigated. Experimental results show that solvents decrease the amide binding energy by 4-6 kcal mol(-1). Using density functional theory (DFT), binding energies were evaluated using nine functionals, after full geometry optimizations with the ECP28MWB basis set for silver and the 6-311++G(2df,2pd) basis set for the other atomic constituents of the ligands. In addition, calculations employing the DZVP basis set for Ag and DZVP2 for C, H, N, and O atoms at the B3LYP and MP2 levels of theory were used to investigate the influence of the basis set on the theoretical bond energies. A comparison of the experimental and theoretical silver(I)-ligand bond dissociation energies enables an assessment of the limitations in the basis sets and functionals in describing the energetics of the metal-solvent interaction and the metal-amide interaction. No single functional/basis set combination was found capable of predicting binding energies with a sufficiently high level of accuracy for the silver(I)-amide solvent complexes.