Unveiling the non-covalent interactions of molecular homodimers by dispersion-corrected DFT calculations and collision-induced broadening of ro-vibrational transitions: application to (CH2F2)2 and (SO2)2.

Thermodynamic and spectroscopic properties of molecular complexes featuring non-covalent interactions, such as van der Waals forces and hydrogen bonds, are of fundamental interest in many fields, ranging from chemistry and biology to nanotechnology. In the present work the homodimers of difluoromethane (CH2F2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are investigated theoretically using dispersion-corrected density functional theory (DFT-D3) and experimentally by tunable diode laser (TDL) infrared (IR) spectroscopy. The dissociation energies of (CH2F2)2 and (SO2)2 are determined experimentally from the broadening of the ro-vibrational transitions of the corresponding monomers collisionally perturbed by a range of damping gases. The resulting dissociation energies are 2.79 ± 0.32 and 2.62 ± 0.16 kcal mol(-1) for the CH2F2 and SO2 dimers, respectively. Six to nine different stationary points on the PES of the two complexes are investigated theoretically at the DFT-D3 level, retrieving the corresponding dissociation energies, structures and rotational constants. Computations are carried out by employing six different density functionals (BLYP, TPSS, B3LYP, PBE0, TPSSh, and PW6B95) in conjunction with def2-TZVP and in a few cases def2-QZVP basis sets. DFT-D3 dissociation energies are benchmarked against reference values from CCSD(T)/CBS computations, and furthermore compared to experimental ones. A very good agreement between theory and experiment is attained, showing that DFT-D3 provides a significant improvement over standard DFT. This work shows that dissociation energies of homodimers can be consistently derived from collisional broadening cross sections and that interaction energies at various DFT-D3 levels (nearly) reach the accuracy of highly correlated wavefunction methods.