Physical achirality in geometrically chiral rotamers of hydrazine and boranylborane molecules.

The diagonal components and the trace of tensors which account for chiroptical response of the hydrazine molecule N2 H4 , that is, static anapole magnetizability and frequency-dependent electric dipole-magnetic dipole polarisability, are a function of the ϕ ≡ ∠ H─N─N─H dihedral angle. They vanish for symmetry reasons at ϕ = 0° and ϕ = 180°, corresponding respectively to C2v and C2h point group symmetries, that is, cis and trans conformers characterized by the presence of molecular symmetry planes. Nonetheless, vanishing diagonal components have been observed also in the proximity of ∠ H─N─N─H = 90°, in which the point group symmetry is C2 and hydrazine is unquestionably chiral. In the boranylborane molecule B2 H4 , assuming the B─B bond in the y direction, the ayy component of the anapole magnetizability tensor approximately vanishes for dihedral angles ∠ H─B─B─H corresponding to chiral rotamers which belong to D2 symmetry. Such anomalous effects have been ascribed to physical achirality of these conformers, that is, to their inability to sustain electronic current densities inducing either anapole moments, or electric and magnetic dipole moments, about the chiral axis connecting heavier atoms, as well as perpendicular directions. In other terms, the structure of certain geometrically chiral rotamers may be such that neither toroidal nor helical flow, which determine chiroptical phenomenology, can take place in the presence of perturbing fields parallel or orthogonal to the chiral axis.

The influence of relativistic effects on nuclear magnetic resonance spin-spin coupling constant polarizabilities of H2 O2 , H2 S2 , H2 Se2 , and H2 Te2.

Relativistic and nonrelativistic calculations have been performed on hydrogen peroxide, dihydrogen disulfide, dihydrogen diselenide, and dihydrogen ditelluride, H2 X2 (X = O, S, Se, Te), to investigate the consequences of relativistic effects on their structures as well as their nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spin-spin coupling constants and spin-spin coupling constant polarizabilites. The study has been performed using both one-component nonrelativistic and four-component relativistic calculations at the density functional theory (DFT) level with the B3LYP exchange-correlation functional. The calculation of nuclear spin-spin coupling constant polarizabilities has been performed by evaluating the components of the third order tensor, nuclear spin-spin coupling polarizability, using quadratic response theory. From this, the pseudoscalar associated with this tensor has also been calculated. The results show that relativistic corrections become very important for H2 Se2 and H2 Te2 and hint that a new chiral discrimination technique via NMR spectroscopy might be possible for molecules containing elements like Se or Te. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Computational study of basis set and electron correlation effects on anapole magnetizabilities of chiral molecules.

In the presence of a static, nonhomogeneous magnetic field, represented by the axial vector B at the origin of the coordinate system and by the polar vector C=∇×B, assumed to be spatially uniform, the chiral molecules investigated in this paper carry an orbital electronic anapole, described by the polar vector A. The electronic interaction energy of these molecules in nonordered media is a cross term, coupling B and C via a¯, one third of the trace of the anapole magnetizability aαß tensor, that is, WBC=-a¯B·C. Both A and W(BC) have opposite sign in the two enantiomeric forms, a fact quite remarkable from the conceptual point of view. The magnitude of a¯ predicted in the present computational investigation for five chiral molecules is very small and significantly biased by electron correlation contributions, estimated at the density functional level via three different functionals. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Crystal Structure Prediction from First Principles: The Crystal Structures of Glycine.

Here we present the results of our unbiased searches of glycine polymorphs obtained using the Genetic Algorithms search implemented in Modified Genetic Algorithm for Crystals coupled with the local optimization and energy evaluation provided by Quantum Espresso. We demonstrate that it is possible to predict the crystal structures of a biomedical molecule using solely first principles calculations. We were able to find all the ambient pressure stable glycine polymorphs, which are found in the same energetic ordering as observed experimentally and the agreement between the experimental and predicted structures is of such accuracy that the two are visually almost indistinguishable.

Nuclear magnetic resonance J coupling constant polarizabilities of hydrogen peroxide: a basis set and correlation study.

In this article, we present the so far most extended investigation of the calculation of the coupling constant polarizability of a molecule. The components of the coupling constant polarizability are derivatives of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) indirect nuclear spin-spin coupling constant with respect to an external electric field and play an important role for both chiral discrimination and solvation effects on NMR coupling constants. In this study, we illustrate the effects of one-electron basis sets and electron correlation both at the level of density functional theory as well as second-order polarization propagator approximation for the small molecule hydrogen peroxide, which allowed us to perform calculations with the largest available basis sets optimized for the calculation of NMR coupling constants. We find a systematic but rather slow convergence with the one-electron basis set and that augmentation functions are required. We observe also large and nonsystematic correlation effects with significant differences between the density functional and wave function theory methods.

Electric field effects on nuclear magnetic shielding of the 1:1 and 2:1 (homo and heterochiral) complexes of XOOX' (X, X' = H, CH3) with lithium cation and their chiral discrimination.

The set of 1:1 and 2:1 complexes of XOOX' (X, X' = H, CH(3)) with lithium cation has been studied to determine if they are suitable candidates for chiral discrimination in an isotropic medium via nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Conventional nuclear magnetic resonance is unable to distinguish between enantiomers in the absence of a chiral solvent. The criterion for experimental detection is valuated by the isotropic part of nuclear shielding polarisability tensors, related to a pseudoscalar of opposite sign for two enantiomers. The study includes calculations at coupled Hartree-Fock and density functional theory schemes for (17)O nucleus in each compound. Additional calculations for (1)H are also included for some compounds. A huge static homogeneous electric field, perpendicular to the magnetic field of the spectromer, as big as ≈1.7 × 10(8) V m(-1) should be applied to observe a shift of ≈1 ppm for (17)O magnetic shielding in the proposed set of complexes.

Qualitative study of substituent effects on NMR (15)N and (17)O chemical shifts.

A qualitative approach to analyze the electronic origin of substituent effects on the paramagnetic part of chemical shifts is described and applied to few model systems, where its potentiality can be appreciated. The formulation of this approach is based on the following grounds. The influence of different inter- or intramolecular interactions on a second-order property can be qualitatively predicted if it can be known how they affect the main virtual excitations entering into that second-order property. A set of consistent approximations are introduced in order to analyze the behavior of occupied and virtual orbitals that define some experimental trends of magnetic shielding constants. This approach is applied first to study the electronic origin of methyl-beta substituent effects on both (15)N and (17)O chemical shifts, and afterward it is applied to a couple of examples of long-range substituent effects originated in charge transfer interactions such as the conjugative effect in aromatic compounds and sigma-hyperconjugative interactions in saturated multicyclic compounds.