Packed to the Rafters: Filling up C60 with Rare Gas Atoms

Noble gas endohedral fullerenes

This review focuses on the available experimental and theoretical investigations on noble gas (Ng) endohedral fullerenes, addressing essential questions related to the mutual effects that confinement of one or more Ng atoms induces on the electronic structure, bonding, and different properties of fullerenes. It also summarizes the different contributions to the mechanisms of formation and decomplexation, the reactivity towards Diels-Alder cycloaddition reactions, the chemical bonding situation of Ng endohedral fullerenes, and the interactions that dominate within these systems.

On the Existence of HeHe Bond in the Endohedral Fullerene Hе2 @C60

Twenty years have already been passed since the endohedral fullerene's void ceaselessly attracts attention of both, experimentalists and theoreticians, computational chemists and physicists in particular, who direct their efforts on computer simulations of encapsulating atoms and molecules into fullerene void and on unraveling the arising bonding patterns. We review recent developments on the endohedral He₂ @C₆₀ fullerene, on its experimental observation and on related computational works. The two latter are the main concerns in the present work: on the one hand, there experimentally exists the He dimer embedded into C₆₀ void. On the other, computational side, each He atom exhibits a negligible charge transfer to C₆₀ resulting in that altogether, the He dimer exists as a fractionally charged (He^+δ )₂ . Whether there exists a bond between these two helium atoms is the key question of the present work. Since a bond is a two-body creature, we assert that it suffices to define the bond on the basis of Löwdin's postulate of a molecule which we invoke to investigate such formation of the He dimer in a given C₆₀ void in terms of the HeHe potential energy well. It is analytically demonstrated that this well enables to maintain at least one bound (ground) state, and therefore, according to Löwdin's postulate which is naturally anticipated within quantum theory, we infer that (He^+δ )₂ is a molecule, a diatomic, where two heliums are bonded to each other. Using these arguments, we also propose to extend the concept of stability of endohedral fullerenes. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The topology of fullerenes

Fullerenes are carbon molecules that form polyhedral cages. Their bond structures are exactly the planar cubic graphs that have only pentagon and hexagon faces. Strikingly, a number of chemical properties of a fullerene can be derived from its graph structure. A rich mathematics of cubic planar graphs and fullerene graphs has grown since they were studied by Goldberg, Coxeter, and others in the early 20th century, and many mathematical properties of fullerenes have found simple and beautiful solutions. Yet many interesting chemical and mathematical problems in the field remain open. In this paper, we present a general overview of recent topological and graph theoretical developments in fullerene research over the past two decades, describing both solved and open problems. WIREs Comput Mol Sci 2015, 5:96-145. doi: 10.1002/wcms.1207 Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Predicted organic compounds derived from rare gas atoms and formic acid

Organic insertion compounds of rare gas atoms into formic acid were investigated at the MP2(full)/aug-cc-pVTZ level. There are two configuration isomers for each molecule based on the location of H atoms: trans- and cis-HCOORgH (Rg = Ar, Kr, Xe). Their structures, harmonic frequencies, and decomposition energies have been calculated using the above ab initio method. Using trans-HCOOXeH as an example, natural bond orbital (NBO) and atom-in-molecules (AIM) analyses were also carried out to explore the binding nature of the rare gas atoms. The formation mechanism of molecular orbitals is also presented in this paper. The presented results indicate that HCOOXeH and HCOOKrH are potential candidates for experimental observation.

Structure and properties of the nonface-spiral fullerenes T-C₃₈₀, D₃-C₃₈₄, D₃-C₄₄₀, and D₃-C₆₇₂ and their halma and leapfrog transforms

The structure and properties of the three smallest nonface-spiral (NS) fullerenes NS-T-C₃₈₀, NS-D₃-C₃₈₄, NS-D₃-C₄₄₀, and the first isolated pentagon NS-fullerene, NS-D₃-C₆₇₂, are investigated in detail. They are constructed by either a generalized face-spiral algorithm or by vertex insertions followed by a force-field optimization using the recently introduced program Fullerene. The obtained structures were then further optimized at the density functional level of theory and their stability analyzed with reference to Ih-C₆₀. The large number of hexagons results in a higher stability of the NS-fullerenes compared to C60, but, as expected, in a lower stability than most stable isomers. None of the many investigated halma transforms on nonspiral fullerenes, NS-T-C₃₈₀, NS-D₃-C₃₈₄, NS-D₃-C₄₄₀, and NS-D₃-C₆₇₂, admit any spirals, and we conjecture that all halma transforms of NS-fullerenes belong to the class of NS-fullerenes. A similar result was found to not hold for the related leapfrog transformation. We also show that the first known NS-fullerene with isolated pentagons, NS-D₃-C₆₇₂, is a halma transform of D3-C₁₆₈.

Forced bonding and QTAIM deficiencies: a case study of the nature of interactions in He@adamantane and the origin of the high metastability

Calculations within the framework of the interacting quantum atoms (IQA) approach have shown that the interactions of the helium atom with both tertiary, tC, and secondary, sC, carbon atoms in the metastable He@adamantane (He@adam) endohedral complex are bonding in nature, whereas the earlier study performed within the framework of Bader's quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM) revealed that only He---tC interactions are bonding. The He---tC and He---sC bonding interactions are shown to be forced by the high pressure that the helium and carbon atoms exert upon each other in He@adam. The occurrence of a bonding interaction between the helium and sC atoms, which are not linked by a bond path, clearly shows that the lack of a bond path between two atoms does not necessarily indicate the lack of a bonding interaction, as is asserted by QTAIM. IQA calculations showed that not only the destabilization of the adamantane cage, but also a huge internal destabilization of the helium atom, contribute to the metastability of He@adam, these contributions being roughly equal. This result disproves previous opinions based on QTAIM analysis that only the destabilization of the adamantane cage accounts for the endothermicity of He@adam. Also, it was found that there is no homeomorphism of the ρ(r) and -v(r) fields of He@adam. Comparison of the IQA and QTAIM results on the interactions in He@adam exposes other deficiencies of the QTAIM approach. The reasons for the deficiencies in the QTAIM approach are analyzed.

Ab initio study of the organic xenon insertion compound into ethylene and ethane

This paper studies Xe-insertion ethylene and ethane compounds, i.e., HXeC2H3 and HXeC2H5. The structures, harmonic frequencies, and energetics for both molecules have been calculated at the MP2(full)/6-311++G(2d,2p) level. Our theoretical results predict the existence of HXeC2H3 and the instability of HXeC2H5. Natural bond orbital (NBO) analysis shows a strong ionic bond between the xenon atom and hydrocarbon radical. In addition, the interaction between the donor (Xe lone pair) and acceptor (the C-C antibonding orbital, i.e., π*(C-C)) increases the stability of HXeC2H3.