Absence of conjugation in vibrational spectra and assignments of dichloro(vinyl)phosphine and dichloro(phenyl)phosphine oxides and sulfides

The structure and conformational stability of dichloro(vinyl)phosphine and dichloro(phenyl)-phosphine oxides and sulfides were investigated using calculations at the DFT/6-311G** and ab initio ones at the MP2/6-311G** level. We know from our previous results that the addi-tion of diffuse functions to a valence triple zeta basis with polarization functions might lead to an unbalanced basis, which performs even worse than the smaller basis without diffuse functions, as it is the case for the 6-311++G** basis set in the Gaussian program. For large energy differences between conformers, DFT works very well, in some cases even better than MP3 or MP4. The vinyl derivatives were predicted to exist in a cis/gauche conformational equilibrium with cis (the PX bond, X being oxygen or sulfur eclipses the vinyl groups) being the predominant conformer at ambient temperature. In the phenyl case case the two planar forms are equivalent minima. The asymmetric potential function for the internal rotation was determined for each of the molecules. The vibrational frequencies were computed and the spectra, where possible, were compared with the experimental ones. Normal coordinate calculations were carried out and potential energy distributions were calculated for the molecules in the cis and gauche conformations (in the vinyl case, planar one for phenyl), providing a complete assignment of the vibrational lines to symmetry coordinates in the molecules. From our results and their analysis we conclude, in agreement with literature results based on localized orbitals, that conjugation effects are absent - or at least negligible - as compared with electrostatic ones in determining the structures of the stable conformers in both the vinyl and the phenyl derivatives. The P-O bond should be a highly polarized triple bond, as confirmed by analysis of Mulliken populations. The polarization turned out to be much less in the sufides due to the much smaller electronegativity of sulfur as compared with oxygen.