DFT calculations of magnetic parameters for molybdenum complexes and hydroxymethyl intermediates trapped on silica surface

Density functional theory (DFT) calculations of EPR parameters and their structure sensitivity for selected surface paramagnetic species involved in oxidative dehydrogenation of methanol over silica grafted molybdenum catalyst were investigated. Two surface complexes, Mo4c/SiO2 and {O−Mo4c}/SiO2, as well as CH2OH radical trapped on the SiO2 matrix were taken as the examples. The spin-restricted zeroth order regular approximation (ZORA) implemented in the Amsterdam Density Functional suite was used to calculate the electronic g tensor for those species. The predicted values were in satisfactory agreement with experimental EPR results. Five different coordination modes of the CH2OH radical on the silica surface were considered and the isotropic 13C, 17O, and 1H hyperfine coupling constants (HFCC) of the resultant surface complexes were calculated. Structure sensitivity of the HFCC values was discussed in terms of the angular deformations caused by hydrogen bonding with the silica surface.