This study reports the gas-phase homolytic P–H BDEs of a set of 30 phosphine-type oxides (i.e., R¹R²P(=O)H) obtained using the W1w thermochemical protocol. We note that the P–H BDEs (at 298 K) of the species in this dataset differ by as much as 157.2 kJ mol^–1, with (H₂B)₂P(=O)H having the lowest BDE (249.3 kJ mol^–1) and F₂P(=O)H having the highest (406.5 kJ mol^–1). Furthermore, using the full set of 30 all-electron, non-relativistic, vibrationless bottom-of-the-well W1w P–H BDEs as reference values, we have identified several well-performing DFT methods that could be applied to the computation of the P–H BDEs of phosphine-type oxides. The best-performing DFTs (in conjunction with the A'VTZ basis set) were shown to be MN12-SX (MAD = 1.7 kJ mol^–1) and MN12-L (MAD = 2.7 kJ mol^–1).

The gas-phase homolytic S–F bond dissociation energies (BDEs) of 21 sulfenyl-type fluorides (RSF) have been obtained using the W1w thermochemical protocol. The BDEs (at 298K) for the species in this set range from 316.2 (HCCSF) to 368.1 (H₂CCHSF) kJ mol^–1. We additionally report fluorine-transfer energies (FTEs), corresponding to the energetics of fluorine transfer from RSF to H₂S. At 298K, the FTEs range from –10.7 (H₂AlSF) to 90.7 (MeHNSF) kJ mol^–1. We have also assessed the performance of a wide range of density functional theory (DFT) and double-hybrid DFT methods (in conjunction with the A'VQZ basis set) for the calculation of these quantities. For the calculation of S–F BDEs, the M06-2X procedure offers the best performance, with a mean absolute deviation (MAD) of 1.6kJ mol^–1, whilst for the FTEs, B2K-PLYP and DSD-PBEP86 offer the best performance with MADs of 0.5kJ mol^–1.