AM1 Sparkle modeling of Er(III) and Ce(III) coordination compounds

The recently defined Sparkle/AM1 model is now extended to Er(III) and Ce(III), using the same parameterization scheme. Thus, a set of fifteen complexes for each lanthanide ion, with various representative ligands of high crystallographic quality (R factor < 0.05 Å), and which possess oxygen and/or nitrogen as coordinating atoms, was used as the training set. In the validation procedure we used a set of twenty-two more complex structures for the Ce(III) ion and twenty-four more for the Er(III) ion, all of high crystallographic quality. For the thirty-seven cerium(III) complexes and thirty-nine erbium(III) complexes considered, the Sparkle/AM1 unsigned mean error, for all interatomic distances between the Ln(III) ion and the ligand atoms of the first sphere of coordination, is 0.08 and 0.06 Å, a level of accuracy comparable to present day ab initio/ECP geometries, while being hundreds of times faster. The Sparkle/AM1 model may thus prove useful for luminescent complex design.