Archive for January 8th, 2013

NCI (non-covalent-interaction) analysis for some π-hydrogen bonded systems.

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

In this post, I looked at some hydrogen bonds formed by interaction of a π-system with an acidic hydrogen. Unlike normal lone pair donors, π-systems can involve more than two electrons, most commonly four or six. Here I look at examples of both these higher-order donors.

(more…)

Tags:,
Posted in Interesting chemistry | No Comments »

Hidden intermediates in the benzidine rearrangement. The monoprotonated mechanism.

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Eagle-eyed footnote readers might have spotted one at the bottom of the post on the benzidine rearrangement. I was comparing the N-N bond lengths in crystal structures of known diprotonated hydrazines (~1.45Å) with the computed N-N bond length at the start point of the intrinsic reaction coordinate for the [5,5] sigmatropic rearrangement of di-N-protonated diphenylhydrazine (the active species in the benzidine rearrangement itself), which was some 1Å longer. This post explores the implications of this oddity.

(more…)

Tags:,
Posted in Uncategorised | 3 Comments »