Nature of halogen bonding. A study based on the topological analysis of the Laplacian of the electron charge density and an energy decomposition analysis.

In this work we investigate the nature of the Cl···N interactions in complexes formed between substituted ammonium [NHn(X3-n) (with n = 0, 1, 2, 3 and X = -CH3, -F] as Lewis bases and F-Cl molecule as Lewis acid. They have been chosen as a study case due to the wide range of variation of their binding energies, BEs. Møller-Plesset [MP2/6-311++G(2d,2p)] calculations show that the BEs for this set of complexes lie in the range from 1.27 kcal/mol (in F-Cl···NF3) to 27.62 kcal/mol [in F-Cl···N(CH3)3]. The intermolecular distribution of the electronic charge density and their L(r) = -¼∇(2)ρ(r) function have been investigated within the framework of the atoms in molecules (AIM) theory. The intermolecular interaction energy decomposition has also been analyzed using the reduced variational space (RVS) method. The topological analysis of the L(r) function reveals that the local topological properties measured at the (3,+1) critical point [in L(r) topology] are good descriptors of the strength of the halogen bonding interactions. The results obtained from energy decomposition analysis indicate that electrostatic interactions play a key role in these halogen bonding interactions. These results allow us to establish that, when the halogen atom is bonded to a group with high electron-withdrawing capacity, the electrostatic interaction between the electron cloud of the Lewis base and the halogen atom unprotected nucleus of the Lewis acid produces the formation and determines the geometry of the halogen bonded complexes. In addition, a good linear relationship has been established between: the natural logarithm of the BEs and the electrostatic interaction energy between electron charge distribution of N atom and nucleus of Cl atom, denoted as V e-n(N,Cl) within the AIM theory.