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The structures and interaction energies of water clusters with ring stacking motifs are studied by using ab initio calculations. The structures of the water clusters are constructed by stacking either single rings or multi‐rings of tetramer, pentamer, and hexamer. We found that, in the single‐ring‐stacking motif, the most stable isomers exhibit an alternative clockwise‐anticlockwise stacking pattern. We also show that four‐layer single‐ring‐stacking isomers are not energetically favorable in comparison with those of two‐layer multi‐ring‐stacking isomers. The relative stability of the isomers is also analyzed in terms of H‐bond strength and elastic distortions of the water molecules.

Two structural isomers containing five second‐row element atoms with 24 valence electrons were generated and identified by matrix‐isolation IR spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations. The OCBNO complex, which is produced by the reaction of boron atoms with mixtures of carbon monoxide and nitric oxide in solid neon, rearranges to the more stable OBNCO isomer on UV excitation. Bonding analysis indicates that the OCBNO complex is best described by the bonding interactions between a triplet‐state boron cation with an electron configuration of (2s)0(2pσ)0(2pπ)2 and the CO/NO− ligands in the triplet state forming two degenerate electron‐sharing π bonds and two ligand‐to‐boron dative σ bonds., Two of five: Two isomers of five‐atom BCNO2 were synthesized and identified by matrix‐isolation IR spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations. OCBNO, which is produced by the reaction of boron atoms with CO/NO in solid neon, rearranges to the more stable OBNCO isomer on UV excitation. Bonding analysis indicates that OCBNO is best described by the bonding interactions of triplet‐state B+ and the CO/NO− ligands in the triplet state forming two degenerate electron‐sharing π bonds and two ligand‐to‐boron dative σ bonds.

The ab initio prediction of reaction rate constants for systems with hundreds of atoms with an accuracy that is comparable to experiment is a challenge for computational quantum chemistry. We present a divide‐and‐conquer strategy that departs from the potential energy surfaces obtained by standard density functional theory with inclusion of dispersion. The energies of the reactant and transition structures are refined by wavefunction‐type calculations for the reaction site. Thermal effects and entropies are calculated from vibrational partition functions, and the anharmonic frequencies are calculated separately for each vibrational mode. This method is applied to a key reaction of an industrially relevant catalytic process, the methylation of small alkenes over zeolites. The calculated reaction rate constants (free energies), pre‐exponential factors (entropies), and enthalpy barriers show that our computational strategy yields results that agree with experiment within chemical accuracy limits (less than one order of magnitude).

International audience; Graphene oxide has multiple potential applications. The chemistry of graphene oxide and its response to external stimuli such as temperature and light are not well understood and only approximately controlled. This under- standing is crucial to enable future applications of this material. Here, a com- bined experimental and density functional theory study shows that multilayer graphene oxide produced by oxidizing epitaxial graphene via the Hummers method is a metastable material whose structure and chemistry evolve at room temperature with a characteristic relaxation time of about one month. At the quasi-equilibrium, graphene oxide reaches a nearly-stable reduced O/C ratio, and exhibits a structure intensively deprived of epoxide groups and enriched of hydroxyl groups. Our calculations show that the structural and chemical changes are driven by the availability of hydrogen in the oxidized graphitic sheets, which favors the reduction of epoxide groups and the formation of water molecules.

WOS: 000251238700001, Geometric parameters and FT-IR spectrum of 6-bromo-8- thia-1,4-epoxybicyclo[ 4.3.0]non-2-ene were computed by the HF, B3LYP, B3PW91 and mPW1PW91 methods in conjunction with the 6-31G(d,p) basis set. The calculated IR spectra are in a good agreement with the observed FT-IR spectrum. A general better performance of B3LYP, B3PW91 and mPW1PW91 versus HF was quantitatively characterized by using PAVF 1.0 program. Optimal uniform scaling factors calculated for the title compound are 0.8952, 0.9552, 0.9520 and 0.9456 for HF, B3LYP, B3PW91 and MPW1PW91 methods, respectively.

This paper focuses in the influence of halogen atoms in the design and structural control of the crystal packing of Group VIII halogenated metallocenes. The study is based on the present knowledge on new types of intermolecular contacts such as halogen (X⋯X, C-X⋯H, C-X⋯&pi, ), &pi, ⋯&pi, and C-H⋯&pi, interactions. The presence of novel C-H⋯M interactions is also discussed. Crystal packings are analysed after database search on this family of compounds. Results are supported by ab initio calculations on electrostatic charge distributions, Hirshfeld analysis is also used to predict the types of contacts to be expected in the molecules. Special attention is given to the competition among hydrogen and halogen interactions, mainly its influence on the nature and geometric orientations of the different supramolecular motifs. Supramolecular arrangements of halogenated metallocenes and Group IV di-halogenated bent metallocenes are also compared and discussed. Analysis supports halogen bonds as the predominant interactions in defining the crystal packing of bromine and iodine 1,1&prime, halometallocenes.

The hydrogen bond represents a fundamental intermolecular interaction that binds molecules in vapor and liquid water. A crucial and debated aspect of its electronic structure and chemistry is the charge transfer (CT) accompanying it. Much effort has been devoted, in particular, to the study of the smallest prototype system, the water dimer, but even here results and interpretations differ widely. In this paper, we reassess CT in the water dimer by using charge-displacement analysis. Besides a reliable estimate of the amount of CT (14.6 me) that characterizes the system, our study provides an unambiguous context, and very useful bounds, within which CT effects may be evaluated, crucially including the associated energy stabilization.

The helical structure of the chiral nematic phases induced by chiral dopants in nematic solvents provides a macroscopic image of the molecular chirality of the dopant promoted by the orientational order. Chiral biphenyls are challenging systems because their twisting ability shows a strong dependence on the molecular structure, which does not conform to empirical correlation rules. This points out the need for adequate interpretative tools, able to establish a link between molecular properties and macroscopic response. In this paper the twisting ability of chiral biphenyls is reviewed, by reporting examples taken from the literature together with some new experimental results. The microscopic origin of the observed behavior is explained in terms of chirality and anisotropy of short-range and electrostatic-induction interactions. These are described, respectively, by a shape model and a reaction field method, having the common characteristics of a realistic representation of the structure and properties of the chiral dopants in terms of molecular surface, atom charges, and distributed polarizabilities.

Item does not contain fulltext Transport properties of molecular junctions are notoriously expensive to calculate with ab initio methods, primarily due to the semi-infinite electrodes. This has led to the introduction of different approximation schemes for the electrodes. For the most popular metals used in experiments, such as gold, the wide-band limit (WBL) is a particularly efficient choice. In this paper, we investigate the performance of different WBL schemes relative to more sophisticated approaches including the fully self-consistent non-equilibrium Green's function method. We find reasonably good agreement between all schemes for systems in which the molecule (and not the metal-molecule interface) dominates the transport properties. Moreover, our implementation of the WBL requires negligible computational effort compared to the ground-state density-functional theory calculation of a molecular junction. We also present a new approximate but efficient scheme for calculating transport with a finite bias. Provided the voltage drop occurs primarily inside the molecule, this method provides results in reasonable agreement with fully self-consistent calculations.