An effective scaling frequency factor method for scaling of harmonic vibrational frequencies: Application to 1,2,4-triazole derivatives

Scaling of harmonic frequencies of a molecule is one of the methods of improving the agreement between the calculated from a quadratic force field and experimental vibrational spectrum. An application of the recently proposed effective scaling frequency factor (ESFF) method to the complicated 1,2,4-triazole derivatives is presented. The calculations are based on the DFT/B3LYP/6-311G**. quadratic force fields. It is shown that the ESFF method is capable of providing the high-quality spectra with regard to the scaled frequencies, comparable to these obtained with the well-established scaled quantum mechanical (SQM) force field method. Using the recommended scaling factors for the 11-parameter calculations, the RMS value obtained for a set of 293 vibrational modes of four compounds is only 8.7 and 8.5 cm(-1), for SQM and ESFF, respectively, provided the hydrogen bonded C=O bond was excluded from the general non-hydrogen XX stretch group, and the scaling factor attributed to this bond was optimized. The new, 9-parameter set of scaling factors provides SQM- and ESFF-scaled frequencies that are of comparable quality to those of the 11-parameter calculations. In addition, it provides (on average) more reliable band splittings in the middle region of the spectrum, and the order of the scaled frequencies corresponds to that of the experimental bands. The straightforward application of the ESFF method to estimate the value of the scaled frequency is also presented. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.