title: Electron capture activation of the disulfide bond. The role of the asymmetry and electronegativity.
abstract: The effects of electron capture on the structure of XSSX' disulfide derivatives in which the substituents attached to the sulfur atoms have different electronegativites have been investigated at different levels of theory, namely DFT, MP2, QCISD and CASSCF/CASPT2. Although it has been generally assumed that electron attachment to disulfide derivatives leads to a systematic and significant activation of the S-S bond, our results show that this is the case only when the substituents X or X' have low electronegativity. Otherwise, the S-S bond in the anion remains practically unperturbed and only the S-X bond is largely activated or even broken, because the extra electron occupies the sigma*(S-X) rather than the sigma*(S-S) antibonding orbital. Our results also show that S-S activation yields a system with a unique anion, whereas when the S-X activation is significant, two stable anionic species, stretched and bent, are formed.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Química, C-9. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Cantoblanco, ES-28049 Madrid, Spain. manuel.yanez@uam.es
authors.forename: José A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Gámez
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Serrano-Andrés
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yáñez
mesh_terms: D004220:Disulfides / Q000737:chemistry*; D004579:Electron Transport; D004583:Electrons; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D011789:Quantum Theory
chemical_list: D004220:Disulfides