The halogen bond occurs when there is evidence of a net attractive interaction between an electrophilic region associated with a halogen atom in a molecular entity and a nucleophilic region in another, or the same, molecular entity. In this fairly extensive review, after a brief history of the interaction, we will provide the reader with a snapshot of where the research on the halogen bond is now, and, perhaps, where it is going. The specific advantages brought up by a design based on the use of the halogen bond will be demonstrated in quite different fields spanning from material sciences to biomolecular recognition and drug design.

The Halogen Bond

The π → π* transitions of more than 100 organic dyes from the major classes of chromophores (quinones, diazo, ...) have been investigated using a Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory (TD-DFT) procedure relying on large atomic basis sets and the systematic modeling of solvent effects. These calculations have been performed with pure (PBE) as well as conventional (PBE0) and long-range (LR) corrected hybrid functionals (LC-PBE, LC-ωPBE, and CAM-B3LYP). The computed wavelengths are systematically guided by the percentage of exact exchange included at intermediate interelectronic distance, i.e., the λmax value always follows the PBE > PBE0 > CAM-B3LYP > LC-PBE > LC-ωPBE > HF sequence. The functional giving the best estimates of the experimental transition energies may vary, but PBE0 and CAM-B3LYP tend to outperform all other approaches. The latter functional is shown to be especially adequate to treat molecules with delocalized excited states. The mean absolute error provided by PBE0 is 22 nm (0.14 eV) wit...

TD-DFT Performance for the Visible Absorption Spectra of Organic Dyes: Conventional versus Long-Range Hybrids

The reactions of aryl bromides with amines occurs at room temperature when using Pd(0) and P(t-Bu)(3) in a 1:1 ratio, and the reactions of aryl chlorides occur at room temperature or 70 degrees C. The arylation of indoles and the new arylation of carbamates also occur when using P(t-Bu)(3) as ligand.

Room-Temperature Palladium-Catalyzed Amination of Aryl Bromides and Chlorides and Extended Scope of Aromatic C−N Bond Formation with a Commercial Ligand

Halogen bonding is the electron density donation based weak interaction of halogens with Lewis bases Its applicability for molecular recognition processes long remained unappreciated and has so far mostly been studied in silico and in solid state As most physiological processes and chemical reactions take place in solution, investigations in solutions are of highest relevance for its use in the pharmaceutical and material scientific toolboxes Following a short discussion of the phenomenon of halogen bonding, this tutorial review presents an overview of the methods hitherto applied for gaining an improved understanding of its behaviour in solutions and summarizes the gained knowledge in order to indicate the scope of the techniques and to facilitate exciting future developments

Halogen bonding in solution

The volume-conserving hula-twist cis/trans isomerization process has been incorporated in a general scheme for photoisomerization of polyenes, applicable to small organic molecules as well as to protein-bound polyene chromophores. The main theme is that in solution the conventional one-bond-flip mechanism dominates, while in frozen media (or under other forms of supramolecular constraint) the hula-twist mechanism takes over. Literature examples of photoisomerization obtained under confined conditions have been critically reviewed, the applicability of HT has been examined, and new systems unambiguously testing this volume-conserving process are proposed.

Jack Yarwood

Papers

Far-infrared intensity studies of iodine complexes

Far-infrared intensity studies of complexes of some pyridine bases with iodine monochloride