Predicting Chemical Reactivity from the Charge Density through Gradient Bundle Analysis: Moving beyond Fukui Functions.

Predicting chemical reactivity is a major goal of chemistry. Toward this end, atom condensed Fukui functions of conceptual density functional theory have been used to predict which atom is most likely to undergo electrophilic or nucleophilic attack, providing regioselectivity information. We show that the most probable regions for electrophilic attack within each atom can be predicted through analysis of gradient bundle volumes, a property that depends only on the charge density of the neutral molecules. We also introduce gradient bundle condensed Fukui functions to compare the stereoselectivity information obtained from gradient bundle volume analysis. We demonstrate this method using the test set of molecular fluorine, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen cyanide.