Halogen bonding refers to the non-covalent interactions of halogen atoms X in some molecules, RX, with negative sites on others. It can be explained by the presence of a region of positive electrostatic potential, the sigma-hole, on the outermost portion of the halogen's surface, centered on the R-X axis. We have carried out a natural bond order B3LYP analysis of the molecules CF(3)X, with X = F, Cl, Br and I. It shows that the Cl, Br and I atoms in these molecules closely approximate the [Formula: see text] configuration, where the z-axis is along the R-X bond. The three unshared pairs of electrons produce a belt of negative electrostatic potential around the central part of X, leaving the outermost region positive, the sigma-hole. This is not found in the case of fluorine, for which the combination of its high electronegativity plus significant sp-hybridization causes an influx of electronic charge that neutralizes the sigma-hole. These factors become progressively less important in proceeding to Cl, Br and I, and their effects are also counteracted by the presence of electron-withdrawing substituents in the remainder of the molecule. Thus a sigma-hole is observed for the Cl in CF(3)Cl, but not in CH(3)Cl.

Covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are an emerging class of highly tuneable crystalline, porous materials. Here we report the first COFs that change their electronic structure reversibly depending on the surrounding atmosphere. These COFs can act as solid-state supramolecular solvatochromic sensors that show a strong colour change when exposed to humidity or solvent vapours, dependent on vapour concentration and solvent polarity. The excellent accessibility of the pores in vertically oriented films results in ultrafast response times below 200 ms, outperforming commercially available humidity sensors by more than an order of magnitude. Employing a solvatochromic COF film as a vapour-sensitive light filter, we demonstrate a fast humidity sensor with full reversibility and stability over at least 4000 cycles. Considering their immense chemical diversity and modular design, COFs with fine-tuned solvatochromic properties could broaden the range of possible applications for these materials in sensing and optoelectronics.

The strong collinear polarizability of the A-H bond in A-H···B hydrogen bonds is shown to lead to an enhanced σ-hole on the donor hydrogen atom and hence to stronger hydrogen bonding. This effect helps to explain the directionality of hydrogen bonds, the well known cooperative effect in hydrogen bonding, and the occurrence of blue-shifting. The latter results when significant additional electron density is shifted into the A-H bonding region by the polarization effect. The shift in the A-H stretching frequency is shown to depend essentially linearly on the calculated atomic charge on the donor hydrogen for all donors in which A belongs to the same row of the periodic table. A further result of the polarization effect, which is also expected for other σ-hole bonds, is that the strength of the non-covalent interaction depends strongly on external electric fields.

A three-pronged approach has been used to design rational improvements in self-assembled monolayer field-effect transistors: classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate atomistic structure, large-scale quantum mechanical (QM) calculations for electronic properties, and device fabrication and characterization as the ultimate goal. The MD simulations reveal the effect of using two-component monolayers to achieve intact dielectric insulating layers and a well-defined semiconductor channel. The QM calculations identify improved conduction paths in the monolayers that consist of an optimum mixing ratio of the components. These results have been used both to confirm the predictions of the calculations and to optimize real devices. Monolayers were characterized with X-ray reflectivity measurements and by electronic characterization of complete devices.

CypScore is an in silico approach for predicting the likely sites of cytochrome P450-mediated metabolism of druglike organic molecules. It consists of multiple models for the most important P450 oxidation reactions such as aliphatic hydroxylation, N-dealkylation, O-dealkylation, aromatic hydroxylation, double-bond oxidation, N-oxidation, and S-oxidation. Each of these models is based on atomic reactivity descriptors derived from surface-based properties calculated with ParaSurf and based on AM1 semiempirical molecular orbital theory. The models were trained with data derived from Bayer Schering Pharma's in-house MajorMetabolite Database with more than 2300 transformations and more than 800 molecules collected from the primary literature. The models have been balanced to allow the treatment of relative intramolecular, intra-chemotype, and inter-chemotype reactivities of the labile sites toward oxidation. The models were evaluated with promising hit rates on three public datasets of varying quality in the annotation of the experimental positions. For 39 well-characterized compounds from 14 in-house lead optimization programs, we could detect at least one major metabolite for the three highest-ranked positions in 87 % of the compounds and overall more than 62 % of all major metabolites, with promising true- to false-positive ratios of 0.9.