Electronic structure studies of tetrazolium-based ionic liquids.

New energetic ionic liquids are investigated as potential high energy density materials. Ionic liquids are composed of large, charge-diffuse cations, coupled with various (usually oxygen containing) anions. In this work, calculations have been performed on the tetrazolium cation with a variety of substituents. Density functional theory (DFT) with the B3LYP functional, using the 6-311G(d,p) basis set was used to optimize geometries. Improved treatment of dynamic electron correlation was obtained using second-order perturbation theory (MP2). Heats of formation of the cation with different substituent groups were calculated using isodesmic reactions and Gaussian-2 calculations on the reactants. The cation was paired with oxygen rich anions ClO4-, NO3-, or N(NO2)2- and those structures were optimized using both DFT and MP2. The reaction pathway for proton transfer from the cation to the anion was investigated.