Improving the accuracy of (31)P NMR chemical shift calculations by use of scaling methods

Calculation of (31)P NMR chemical shifts for a series of tri- and tetracoordinate phosphorus compounds using several basis sets and density functional theory (DFT) functionals gave a modest fit to experimental chemical shifts, but an excellent linear fit when plotted against the experimental values. The resultant scaling methods were then applied to a variety of “large” compounds previously selected by Latypov et al. and a set of stereoisomeric and unusual compounds selected here. No one method was best for all structural types. For compounds that contain P–P bonds and P–C multiple bonds, the Latypov et al. method using the PBE0 functional was best (mean absolute deviation/root mean square deviation (MAD/RMSD) = 6.9/8.5 ppm and 6.6/8.2 ppm, respectively), but for the full set of compounds gave higher deviations (MAD/RMSD = 8.2/12.3 ppm), and failed by over 60 ppm for a three-membered phosphorus heterocycle. Use of the M06-2X functional for both the structural optimization and NMR chemical shift calculation was best overall for the compounds without P–C multiple bonds (MAD/RMSD = 5.4/7.1 ppm), but failed by 30–49 ppm for compounds having any P–C multiple-bond character. Failures of these magnitudes have not been reported previously for these widely used functionals. These failures were then used to screen a variety of recommended functionals, leading to better overall methods for calculation of these chemical shifts: optimization with the M06-2X functional and NMR calculation with the PBE0 or ωB97x-D functionals gave values for MAD/RMSD = 6.9/8.5 ppm and 6.8/9.1 ppm, respectively, over an experimental chemical shift range of −181 to 356 ppm. Due to the unexplained failures observed, we recommend use of more than one method when looking at novel structures.