The polarizability of organometallic bonds

Unveiling GruPol: Predicting Electric and Electrostatic Properties of Macromolecules via the Building Block Approach

Understanding electrostatics and electric properties of macromolecules is crucial in uncovering the intricacies of their behavior and functionality. The precise knowledge of these properties enhances our ability to manipulate and engineer macromolecules for diverse applications, spanning from drug design to materials science. Having that in mind, we present here the GruPol database approach to characterize and accurately predict dipole moments, static polarizabilities, and electrostatic potential of proteins and their subunits. The method involves partitioning of the electron density, calculated at the M06-HF/aug-cc-pVDZ level of theory, of small peptides into predefined building blocks that are averaged over the database. By manipulating and positioning these building blocks, GruPol enables the description of proteins assembled from over nearly 100 residual entries, allowing for efficient and precise computation of the above-mentioned properties across a broad range of proteins. The database enables the user to include solvent effects as well as define protonation states on the protein's backbone to account for pH variations. The precision of the proposed scheme is benchmarked against experimental data for myoglobin species.

Single-Crystal-to-Single-Crystal Photosynthesis of Supramolecular Organoboron Polymers with Dynamic Effects

The solid-state synthesis of single-crystalline organic polymers, having functional properties, remains an attractive and developing research area in polymer chemistry and materials science. However, light-triggered topochemical synthesis of crystalline polymers comprising an organoboron backbone has not yet been reported. Here, we describe an intriguing example of single-crystal-to-single-crystal (SCSC) rapid photosynthesis (occurs on a seconds-scale) of two structurally different linear organoboron polymers, driven by environmentally sustainable visible/sun light, obtained from the same monomer molecule. A newly designed Lewis acid-base type molecular B ← N organoboron adduct (consisting of an organoboron core and naphthylvinylpyridine ligands) crystallizes in two solid-state forms featuring the same chemical structure but different 3D structural topologies, namely, monomers 1 and 2. The solvate molecule-free crystals of 1 undergo topochemical photopolymerization via an unusual olefin-naphthyl ring [2 + 2] cyclization to yield the single crystalline [3]-ladderane polymer 1P growing along the B ← N linkages, accompanied by instantaneous and violent macroscopic mechanical motions or photosalient effects (such as bending-reshaping and jumping motions). In contrast, visible light-harvesting single crystals of 2 quantitatively polymerize to a B ← N bond-stabilized polymer 2P in a SCSC fashion owing to the rapid [2 + 2] cycloaddition reaction among olefin double bonds. Such olefin bonds in the crystals of 2 are suitably preorganized for photoreaction due to the presence of solvate molecules in the crystal packing. Single crystals of 2 also show photodynamic jumping motions - in response to visible light but in a relatively slower fashion than the crystals of 1. In addition to SCSC topochemical polymerization and dynamic motions, both monomer crystals and their single-crystalline polymers feature green emissive and short-lived room-temperature phosphorescence properties upon excitation with visible-light wavelength.

On the Cartesian Representation of the Molecular Polarizability Tensor Surface by Polynomial Fitting to Ab Initio Data

We describe an approach to constructing an analytic Cartesian representation of the molecular dipole polarizability tensor surface in terms of polynomials in interatomic distances with a training set of ab initio data points obtained from a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation or by any other available means. The proposed formulation is based on a perturbation treatment of the unmodified point dipole polarizability model of Applequist [ J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1972, 94, 2952] and is shown here to be, by construction (i) free of short-range or other singularities or discontinuities, (ii) symmetric and translationally invariant, and (iii) nonreliant on a body-fixed coordinate system. Permutational invariance of like nuclei is demonstrated to be readily applicable, making this approach useful for highly fluxional and reactive systems. Derivation of the method is described in detail, adding brief didactic numerical examples of H₂ and H₂O and concluding with an MD simulation of the Raman spectrum of H₅O₂⁺ at 300 K with the polarizability tensor fitted to CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pVTZ data obtained using the HBB-4B potential [ J. Chem. Phys. 2005, 122, 044308].

Origin of chromic effects and crystal-to-crystal phase transition in the polymorphs of tyraminium violurate

Chromic materials are nowadays widely used in various technological applications, however understanding the effect and the possibility of tuning the obtained colour of a material are still challenging. Here a combined experimental and theoretical study is presented on the solvatochromic and crystallochromic effects in the (pseudo)polymorphs of tyraminium violurate. This organic material exhibits a large solvatochromic shift (ca 192 nm) associated with broad colour change (from yellow to dark violet). Tyraminum violurate crystallizes as red crystals of form (I) from water as a solvate, and as an unsolvated form [violet crystals of (II)] from methanol solution. Form (I), when heated, undergoes two crystal-to-crystal phase transformations associated with colour change of the crystals. Crystals of (II) show extreme birefringence (ca 0.46) and high refractive index (n γ above 1.90), which can be correlated with preferential orientation of the resultant dipole moments of the ions. Examination of optical effects (UV-Vis spectra) along with theoretical calculations (QTAIM, atomic and bond polarizabilities) enabled the description of the origin of colour in the studied materials.

Partition of optical properties into orbital contributions

A new tool to analyze the response property through the partition of nonlinear optical properties in terms of orbital contributions (PNOC), valuable in the assessment of the electronic structure methods in the NLOPs computations, is presented.