Density functional theory calculations of redox properties of iron–sulphur protein analogues

A central issue in understanding redox properties of iron–sulphur (Fe–S) proteins is determining the factors that tune the reduction potentials of the Fe–S clusters. Studies of redox site analogues play an important role, particularly because individual factors can be examined independently of the environment by combining calculations and experiments of carefully designed ligands for the analogues. For iron–sulphur analogues, our study has shown that broken-symmetry density functional theory gives good energetics when the geometry is optimised using B3LYP with a double-ζ basis set with polarisation functions, and the energies of these geometries are calculated using B3LYP with additional diffuse functions added to the sulphurs. A comparison of our calculated energies for redox site analogues in the gas phase against electron detachment energies measured by a combination of electrospray ionisation and photoelectron spectroscopy (EI–PES) by Wang and co-workers has been essential because the comparison is fo...