Natural bond orbital donor-acceptor interactions

A. E. Reed, L. A. Curtiss, and F. Weinhold, Chem. Rev., 88, 899 (1988). Intermolecular Interactions from a Natural Bond Orbital, Donor-Acceptor Viewpoint. 

A.E. Reed et al., Intermolecular interactions from a natural bond orbital, donor-acceptor viewpoint. Chem. Rev. 88, 899-926 (1988)... 

In this section, we present a unified picture of the different electronic effects that combine to determine methyl rotor potentials in the S0, Sp and D0 electronic states of different substituted toluenes. Our approach is based on analysis of ab initio wavefunctions using the natural bond orbitals (NBOs)33 of Weinhold and cowork-ers. We will attempt to decompose the methyl torsional potential into two dominant contributions. The first is repulsive steric interactions, which are important only when an ortho substituent is present. The second is attractive donor-acceptor interactions between CH bond pairs and empty antibonding orbitals vicinal to the CH bonds. In the NBO basis, these attractive interactions dominate the barrier in ethane (1025 cm-1) and in 2-methylpropene (1010 cm-1) see Figure 3. By analogy, donor-acceptor attractions are important in toluenes whenever there is a substantial difference in bond order between the two ring CC bonds adjacent to the C-CH3 bond. Viewed the other way around, we can use the measured methyl rotor potential as a sensitive probe of local ring geometry. 

With accurate calculated barriers in hand, we return to the question of the underlying causes of methyl barriers in substituted toluenes. For simpler acyclic cases such as ethane and methanol, ab initio quantum mechanics yields the correct ground state conformer and remarkably accurate barrier heights as well.34-36 Analysis of the wavefunctions in terms of natural bond orbitals (NBOs)33 explains barriers to internal rotation in terms of attractive donor-acceptor (hyperconjuga-tive) interactions between doubly occupied aCH-bond orbitals or lone pairs and unoccupied vicinal antibonding orbitals. 

In n symmetry, there is a stabilizing donor-acceptor interaction involving four electrons between the doubly degenerate nHOMO and itLUMo causing two partial n bonds (8). They are opposed by the Pauli repulsive iHomo - homo two-center four-electron (2c-4e) interaction. Note the difference in nature between c and the n bonds the former is an electron pair bond between singly occupied orbitals, whereas the latter evolves from a donor-acceptor or charge transfer interaction between occupied and unoccupied orbitals. 

Structures (Table 16), points towards chemical bonding, albeit very weak. In fact, a subsequent natural bond orbital analysis of the electronic structure of HeBeO, NeBeO, and ArBeO by Hobza and Schleyer [158] came to the conclusion that the essential nature of the interactions is charge transfer. For HeBeO they found that the overlap between the donor Is orbital of He with the acceptor a orbital of BeO is quite large (0.42). 

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