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Direct ab initio mapping of induced current density in the pi system of the expanded porphyrin amethyrin shows a picture at variance with the conventional 4npi ascription of antiaromaticity. The ipsocentric orbital model interprets the pattern of currents as a superposition of shell contributions: an intense paratropic ring current concentrated on the inner 20-site cycle, counteracted by a weaker diatropic circulation on a 24-site conjugation pathway and a combination of local 5-site diatropic circulations on the six pyrrolic rings.

It is shown that the ipsocentric orbital-based model explains how the charge of the central cation drives the delocalisation pathway in metalloporphyrins. A positive charge +Ze at the centre of the porphin ring gives rise to a two-way radial transfer of charge within the pi structure of the porphin macrocycle. This manifests itself in a change of pathway of the global pi current, as Z increases from Z = 0, from an inner- through a bifurcated- to an outer-pathway. Changes of pathway can be interpreted in terms of a specific pi shielding effect whereby electrons in high-lying pi orbitals are screened from the central charge by the electrons in lower-lying orbitals of the same symmetry. These changes in pi structure are essentially independent of accompanying changes in the sigma structure.

Quenching/survival of ring currents in pi-clamped conjugated monocycles is controlled by the match or mismatch in parity between the frontier orbitals of the central pi-conjugated 4n+2/4n monocycle and those of the clamps. Changes in ring current are not primarily caused by bond alternation or 'Mills-Nixon' effects; current and geometry changes on clamping are both consequences of electronic structure.

A series of trannulene (all-trans annulene) derivatives of [60]fullerene have been prepared by reacting C(60)F(18) with methanetricarboxylate esters that incorporate a range of photoactive functions. All the compounds have the intense emerald-green colour of fullerene trannulenes, characterised by strong bands at ca. 612 and 667 nm. Single crystal X-ray studies show that the packing varies with the nature of the addend, attributable to differing steric effects. UV/vis absorption spectra display transitions of the respective fullerene and addend models, indicating absence of electronic interactions between them in the ground state. These now provide an extensive series for testing photoactive (light-harvesting) properties, with the exceptional properties of having strong visible light absorption. Their exceptional stability is attributed to the 18[small pi] aromatic circuit, inability to undergo nucleophilic substitution without disrupting this circuit, and a curved cage region that is shielded to reagents by the three bulky addends.

Ipsocentric current density maps are computed at the coupled Hartree-Fock level in the 6-31G** basis set for the planar C(2v) B3LYP geometries of the expanded porphyrins, sapphyrin and orangarin. Both give clearly dominant global macrocyclic ring currents, but with opposite senses of circulation: in 22[small pi] sapphyrin, a diatropic current runs, with some bifurcation, around the conventional 22-centre delocalisation pathway; in 20[small pi] orangarin, a paratropic current runs around the inner 17-atom pathway. In agreement with the annulene analogy for these macrocycles, analysis of orbital contributions shows that in each case topology, energy and symmetry of the frontier orbitals together determine the macrocyclic ring current. In sapphryrin, 4-electron diamagnetism (aromaticity) arises from translationally allowed HOMO-LUMO excitations as in benzene itself; in orangarin, 2-electron paramagnetism (antiaromaticity) arises from rotationally allowed HOMO-LUMO excitations as in planarised cyclooctatetraene. The active orbitals invoked in the explanation of ring currents are those involved in the longstanding four-orbital model of porphyrin electronic spectra.

Porphycene, an isomer that can replace porphin in chemical and biochemical contexts, is predicted by ab initio calculation to exhibit a global diatropic pi ring current with bifurcation across the four pyrrole units of the macrocycle. Analysis of the orbital contributions to the current density in porphycene reveals that the global current, with its bifurcation feature, is attributable to the four electrons of the near-degenerate HOMO levels, the same set of active electrons that feature in the well-known four-orbital model of the electronic spectra of porphyrins. Integration of the current density gives 1H, 13C and 15N NMR shieldings that are compatible with the observed low-field shifts of peripheral and bridge protons and high-field shift of the internal NH protons, assignment of the 13C NMR spectrum and the single average 15N chemical shift resulting from rapid NH tautomerism. Geometries were calculated with the DFT B3LYP functional, the current density maps were calculated with the ipsocentric coupled-Hartree-Fock CTOCD-DZ method, and the shieldings with the CTOCD-PZ2 variant, all in the same 6-31G** basis.

A survey of possible structures for the C60F8 molecule has been carried out, using both experimental (19F NMR data) and theoretical (structure-energy correlation) considerations to limit the number of isomers to be regarded as candidates for the previously isolated species. Several isomers are suggested as likely, with one low-energy structure in particular appearing to fulfill all the criteria better than the literature suggestion. Both this predicted isomer and that previously suggested have in common a sub-structure of a single fluorinated carbon atom surrounded by three vicinal fluorine neighbours together with a further pair of fluorine atoms added so as to generate a T-shaped motif.