Density functional theory chemical reactivity index

The aim of this chapter is to discuss chemical reactivity and its application in the real world. Chemical reactivity is an established methodology within the realm of density functional theory (DFT). It is an activity index to propose intra- and intermolecular reactivities in materials using DFT within the domain of hard soft acid base (HS AB) principle. This chapter will address the key features of reactivity index, the definition, a short background followed by the aspects, which were developed within the reactivity domain. Finally, some examples mainly to design new materials related to key industrial issues using chemical reactivity index will be described. I wish to show that a simple theory can be state of the art to design new futuristic materials of interest to satisfy industrial needs. 

Chermette, H. 1999. Chemical reactivity indexes in density functional theory. J. Comp. Chem. 20 129-154. 

Global hardness. The partial charge concept helps the chemist to visualize within a molecule or a network, how the electronic density changes as a function of the spatial location of the various atomic constituents. Another useful information for chemical reactivity would be to visualize where the electronic chemical potential variation should be the largest or the lowest. Such a parameter is called a frontier index and may be defined in density-functional theory as f = dQHOMO/LUMO N (16). Point-charge approximation of this relation shows that each atom of a chemical compound should have a frontier index fj such that (17) ... 

From the theoretical point of view, the electrophilicity concept has been recently discussed in terms of global reactivity indexes defined for the ground states of atoms and molecules by Roy et al.18 19. In the context of the conceptual density functional theory (DFT), a global electrophilicity index defined in terms of the electronic chemical potential and the global hardness was proposed by Maynard et al.20 in their study of reactivity of the HIV-1 nucleocapsid protein p7 zinc finger domains. Recently, Parr, Szentp ly and Liu proposed a formal derivation of the electrophilicity, co, from a second-order energy expression developed in terms of the variation in the number of electrons.21... 

To conclude, we have shown that, despite the complexity of their structural and electronic properties, the reactivity of small metallic clusters can in many cases be understood in simple terms with the use of both global reactivity indexes (ionization potentials, electron affinities, and chemical hardness, which provide a measure of the global cluster reactivity) and local Fukui functions (which allow the identification of special reactive sites within a cluster). All of them can be easily evaluated within the framework of Density Functional Theory. 

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