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Abstract Both methyl groups and benzene rings are exceedingly common, and they lie near one another in many chemical situations. DFT calculations are used to gauge the strength of the attractive forces between them, and to better understand the phenomena that underlie this attraction. Methane and benzene are taken as the starting point, and substituents of both electron‐withdrawing and donating types are added to each. The interaction energy varies between 1.4 and 5.0 kcal/mol, depending upon the substituents placed on the two groups. The nature of the binding is analyzed via Atoms in Molecules (AIM), Natural Bond Orbital (NBO), Symmetry‐Adapted Perturbation Theory (SAPT), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) chemical shifts, and electron density shift diagrams. While there is a sizable electrostatic component, it is dispersion that dominates these interactions, particularly the weaker ones. As such, these interactions cannot be categorized unambiguously as either H‐bonds or tetrel bonds.
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This content will become publicly available on June 18, 2026
Ranking the Properties Important for Understanding Noncovalent Bond Strength
ABSTRACT The interaction energies within noncovalent bonds can be partitioned into electrostatic, induction, and dispersive attractive elements. A set of complexes comprising halogen, chalcogen, pnicogen, and tetrel bonds, are studied by quantum chemical calculations to assess how each of these components can be understood on the basis of properties of the constituent monomers. The variation of the electrostatic term, which accounts for over half of the total attractive energy, can be approximated, but with only modest accuracy, by combination of the maximum and minimum of the electrostatic potential on the two subunits. Induction represents a smaller contribution to the total, but is well connected with the NBO interorbital transfer energy, as opposed to the reciprocal of the HOMO‐LUMO gap which behaves quite differently than IND. Of the various AIM parameters, both the bond critical point density and energy density are closely related to the full interaction energy.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1954310
- PAR ID:
- 10614983
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Computational Chemistry
- Volume:
- 46
- Issue:
- 17
- ISSN:
- 0192-8651
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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