Origin of substituent effects in edge-to-face aryl–aryl interactions

Abstract

Substituent effects in the edge-to-face configuration of the benzene dimer have been studied using modern density functional theory. An accurate interaction potential energy curve has been computed for the unsubstituted dimer using ab initio methods with large basis sets. The recommended binding energy for the edge-to-face benzene dimer is 2.31 kcal mol⁻¹, estimated at the counterpoise-corrected CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pVTZ level of theory. For both edge-ring and face-ring-substituted dimers, interaction energies correlate with σ_m for the substituents, indicating that substituent effects can be understood qualitatively in terms of simple electrostatic effects, although in the latter case dispersion results in some scatter in the data. In contrast to prevailing models of substituent effects in benzene dimers, polarization of the π-system of the substituted ring does not induce substituent effects. For edge-ring-substituted dimers, substituent effects arise from differential electrostatic interactions between the hydrogens on the substituted ring and the π-cloud of the face ring and direct interactions of the substituents with the unsubstituted ring. For face-ring-substituted dimers, substituent effects arise from direct electrostatic and dispersion interactions of the substituents with the edge ring. Substituents with σ_m > 0.12 favour edge ring substitution while for σ_m < 0.12 substitution on the face ring is preferred.

Keywords:

• non-covalent interactions
• π-stacking
• aromatic CH/π interaction
• substituent effects

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NIH-1F32GM082114 (SEW) and the National Science Foundation (CHE-0548209). Computational resources were provided in part by the UCLA Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE).