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Noble gas can be no noble in certain situations from the perspective of structure, bonding, and reactivity. These situations could be extreme experimental conditions or others. In this contribution, we systematically investigate the impact of fullerene encapsulation on molecular structure and chemical reactivity of noble gas dimers (Ng2) in a few fullerene molecules. To that end, we consider He2, Ne2, and Ar2 dimers encapsulated in C50, C60, and C70 fullerenes. We unveil that bond distances of Ng2 inside fullerene become substantially smaller and noble gas atoms become more electrophilic. In return, these noble gas dimers make fullerene molecules more nucleophilic. Using analytical tools from density functional theory, conceptual density functional theory, and information-theoretic approach, we appreciate the nature and origin of these structure and reactivity changes. The results and conclusions from this work should provide more new insights from the viewpoint of changing the perspectives of noble gas reactivity.

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), a population based technique for stochastic search in a multidimensional space, has so far been employed successfully for solving a variety of optimization problems including many multifaceted problems, where other popular methods like steepest descent, gradient descent, conjugate gradient, Newton method, etc. do not give satisfactory results. Herein, we propose a modified PSO algorithm for unbiased global minima search by integrating with density functional theory which turns out to be superior to the other evolutionary methods such as simulated annealing, basin hopping and genetic algorithm. The present PSO code combines evolutionary algorithm with a variational optimization technique through interfacing of PSO with the Gaussian software, where the latter is used for single point energy calculation in each iteration step of PSO. Pure carbon and carbon containing systems have been of great interest for several decades due to their important role in the evolution of life as well as wide applications in various research fields. Our study shows how arbitrary and randomly generated small Cn clusters (n = 3–6, 10) can be transformed into the corresponding global minimum structure. The detailed results signify that the proposed technique is quite promising in finding the best global solution for small population size clusters.

Ab initio and density functional theory-based computations are performed to investigate the structure and stability of H3SiNgNSi and HSiNgNSi compounds (Ng = Xe, Rn). They are thermochemically unstable with respect to the dissociation channel producing Ng and H3SiNSi or HSiNSi. However, they are kinetically stable with respect to this dissociation channel having activation free energy barriers of 19.3 and 23.3 kcal/mol for H3SiXeNSi and H3SiRnNSi, respectively, and 9.2 and 12.8 kcal/mol for HSiXeNSi and HSiRnNSi, respectively. The rest of the possible dissociation channels are endergonic in nature at room temperature for Rn analogues. However, one three-body dissociation channel for H3SiXeNSi and one two-body and one three-body dissociation channels for HSiXeNSi are slightly exergonic in nature at room temperature. They become endergonic at slightly lower temperature. The nature of bonding between Ng and Si/N is analyzed by natural bond order, electron density and energy decomposition analyses. Natural population analysis indicates that they could be best represented as (H3SiNg)+(NSi)− and (HSiNg)+(NSi)−. Energy decomposition analysis further reveals that the contribution from the orbital term (ΔEorb) is dominant (ca. 67%–75%) towards the total attraction energy associated with the Si-Ng bond, whereas the electrostatic term (ΔEelstat) contributes the maximum (ca. 66%–68%) for the same in the Ng–N bond, implying the covalent nature of the former bond and the ionic nature of the latter.

The validity of the maximum hardness principle (MHP) is tested in the cases of 50 chemical reactions, most of which are organic in nature and exhibit anomeric effect. To explore the effect of the level of theory on the validity of MHP in an exothermic reaction, B3LYP/6-311++G(2df,3pd) and LC-BLYP/6-311++G(2df,3pd) (def2-QZVP for iodine and mercury) levels are employed. Different approximations like the geometric mean of hardness and combined hardness are considered in case there are multiple reactants and/or products. It is observed that, based on the geometric mean of hardness, while 82% of the studied reactions obey the MHP at the B3LYP level, 84% of the reactions follow this rule at the LC-BLYP level. Most of the reactions possess the hardest species on the product side. A 50% null hypothesis is rejected at a 1% level of significance.

Quantum chemical computations with full geometry optimization at the B3LYP/6-31G(d) level in aqueous phase at 298 K are performed to calculate a set of molecular properties for 45 aromatic organic acids such as benzoic acid, phenol, cinnamic acid, benzohydroxamic acid, anilinium ion and their meta- and para-substituted derivatives. In a separate set of calculations the 6-31+G(d) basis set is employed for substituted benzoic and cinnamic acids as representative test cases, to test the effect of diffuse functions. Molecular descriptors such as ionization potential, electron affinity, hardness, chemical potential, global electrophilicity and free energy of deprotonation of these acids are computed. The local descriptors such as Fukui functions and group philicity (ω+g) are calculated with Mulliken Population Analysis (MPA) and Hirschfeld Population Analysis (HPA) schemes. These aromatic acids are reacted with a strong base, OH−. The computed Gibbs free energy of deprotonation, the fractional number of electrons transferred, ΔNand electrophilicity based charge transfer index (ECT) in acid–base reaction with a strong base, OH−, ω+gand group charges are correlated with the experimental pKavalues of these acids. It is found that this approach is particularly effective in discussing trends of changes in acidity of intimately related molecules. The effect of substituents on these descriptors is also studied. These parameters are correlated with experimental Hammett substituent constants (σ). The ECT, fractional number of electron transfer (ΔN) and group charge correlate strongly with pKaand σin separate groups of aromatic acids. Minimum energy, maximum hardness and minimum electrophilicity principles are tested for the acid–base reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Density functional calculations on a hexagonal 1D sodium cluster and a 2D potassium cluster show that the M6 (M = Na, K) rings in the chain present in 3D [Na2MoO3L(H2O)2]n (1) and 2D [K2MoO3L(H2O)3]n (2) are aromatic in character according to the nucleus independent chemical shift (NICS) and multicenter bond indices (MCI) values. The NICS values at the center of the Na6 rings and at the cage center of the K6 rings are comparable to the corresponding values of their polyacene analogues in most cases. The stability and reactivity patterns of the M6 rings also follow a similar trend as their organic analogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ayers, Parr, and Pearson recently showed that insight into the hard/soft acid/base (HSAB) principle could be obtained by analyzing the energy of reactions in hard/soft exchange reactions, i.e., reactions in which a soft acid replaces a hard acid or a soft base replaces a hard base [J. Chem. Phys., 2006, 124, 194107]. We show, in accord with the maximum hardness principle, that the hardness increases for favorable hard/soft exchange reactions and decreases when the HSAB principle indicates that hard/soft exchange reactions are unfavorable. This extends the previous work of the authors, which treated only the “double hard/soft exchange” reaction [P. K. Chattaraj and P. W. Ayers, J. Chem. Phys., 2005, 123, 086101]. We also discuss two different approaches to computing the hardness of molecules from the hardness of the composing fragments, and explain how the results differ. In the present context, it seems that the arithmetic mean of fragment softnesses is the preferable definition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]