Diffusion Monte Carlo Study of Bond Dissociation Energies for BH₂, B(OH)₂, BCl₂, and BCl

On basis of bond dissociation energies (BDEs) for BH₂, B(OH)₂, BCl₂, and BCl, the diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) method is applied to explore the BDEs of HB-H, HOB-OH, ClB-Cl, and B-Cl. The effect of the choice of orbitals, as well as the backflow transformation, is studied. The Slater-Jastrow DMC algorithm gives BDEs of 359.1±0.12 kJ/mol for HB?H, 410.5±0.50 kJ/mol for HOB-OH, 357.8±1.46 kJ/mol for ClB-Cl, and 504.5±0.96 kJ/mol for B-Cl using B3PW91 orbitals and similar BDEs when B3LYP orbitals are used. DMC with backflow corrections (BF-DMC) gives a HB-H BDE of 369.9±0.12 kJ/mol which is close to one of the available experimental value (375.8 kJ/mol). In the case of HOB-OH BDE, the BF-DMC calculation is 446.0±1.84 kJ/mol that is closer to the experimental BDE. The BF-DMC BDE for ClB-Cl is 343.2±2.34 kJ/mol and the BF-DMC B-Cl BDE is 523.3±0.33 kJ/mol, which are close to the experimental BDEs, 341.9 and 530.0 kJ/mol, respectively.