Theoretical oxidation state analysis of Ru-(bpy)3: influence of water solvation and Hubbard correction in first-principles calculations.

Oxidation state is a powerful concept that is widely used in chemistry and materials physics, although the concept itself is arguably ill-defined quantum mechanically. In this work, we present impartial comparison of four, well-recognized theoretical approaches based on Lowdin atomic orbital projection, Bader decomposition, maximally localized Wannier function, and occupation matrix diagonalization, for assessing how well transition metal oxidation states can be characterized. Here, we study a representative molecular complex, tris(bipyridine)ruthenium. We also consider the influence of water solvation through first-principles molecular dynamics as well as the improved electronic structure description for strongly correlated d-electrons by including Hubbard correction in density functional theory calculations.