DFT calculation on the electron affinity of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins

Abstract

Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) are extremely toxic and persistent environmental pollutants. Their chemical reactivities and other physicochemical/biological properties show a strong dependence on the chlorination pattern. With increasing the number of chlorines, dioxin congeners become more electronegative and gain higher electron affinities. The vertical electron affinities (VEA) are related with the LUMO energies of neutral molecules. LUMO energies of all PCDD congeners were calculated at the B3LYP/6-31G** level and those of some selected congeners at the level of B3LYP/6-311G**//B3LYP/6-31G** and B3LYP/cc-pvtz//B3LYP/6-31G**. The total energies of neutral and anionic species for dibenzo-p-dioxins (DD), 1469-TCDD, 2378-TCDD, and OCDD were calculated at the level of B3LYP/6-31G**, B3LYP/aug-cc-pvdz, and B3LYP/aug-cc-pvtz//B3LYP/6-31G**. By using the four congeners with D-2h symmetry as reference molecules, we could estimate VEA (B3LYP/aug-cc-pvdz) of 75 PCDD congeners based on the linear correlations between LUMO energy and VEA (B3LYP/6-31G**) and between VEA (B3LYP/6-31G**) and VEA (B3LYP/aug-ccpvtz//B3LYP/6-31G**). Results show that all PCDDs with the number of Cl greater than or equal to 3 have positive electron affinities. The PCDD electron affinity values provided in this work can be a useful data set in understanding the congener-specific reactivities of dioxins in various environmental media.