tmGNN-XAI: An Explainable Graph Neural Network Tool for Predicting Electronic Properties of Transition Metal Complexes from SMILES

Abstract Predicting the electronic properties of transition metal complexes (TMCs) from 2D molecular graphs remains challenging; organic-trained property models lack TMC transferability, universal interatomic potentials require 3D coordinates rather than SMILES, and tools providing holistic electronic property prediction with atom-level explainability and calibrated uncertainty remain limited. We present tmGNN-XAI, a multitask relational graph convolutional network that predicts seven quantum-chemical properties of TMCs directly from SMILES strings and produces perturbation-based atom-level attributions for each prediction. The model encodes dative coordination bonds as a dedicated edge type distinct from covalent bonds and is trained on 100,703 complexes from the tmQM data set spanning 30 transition metals. Test-set performance is competitive with a Chemprop D-MPNN baseline, achieving R2 = 0.979 for metal partial charge and R2 = 0.964 and 0.949 for HOMO and LUMO energies. Across all 100,703 complexes, donor atoms (N, O, S, P) appear among the top-five most important atoms in more than 99.8% of complexes for every property, a large-scale data-driven result consistent with ligand field theory. A trust framework combining ensemble agreement with attribution direction separates predictions into four reliability scenarios; confident predictions achieve 1.6 to 2.5 times lower mean absolute error than uncertain ones for five of seven properties. The framework generalizes to cross-level DFT validation, phototherapy candidate screening (area under the ROC curve (AUC) = 0.735), and indirect redox prediction via Koopmans’ theorem. An interactive web application makes property predictions, atom-level attributions, and trust labels accessible without programming or DFT expertise. tmGNN-XAI is designed as an explainable, first-tier screening tool for TMC electronic property estimation.