Tunneling through weak interactions: Comparison of through-space-, H-bond-, and through-bond-mediated tunneling

Ab initio electronic structure theory calculations on model systems are used for the comparison of tunneling through covalently bonded contacts, hydrogen bonds, and van der Waals contacts. The results have shown that a modest difference is observed between tunneling mediated by H-bonds and tunneling mediated by van der Waals contacts at typical distances for each type of interaction.