The arene-perfluoroarene stacking interaction was studied by experimental and theoretical methods. A series of compounds with different possibilities for formation of this recognition motif in the solid state were synthesized, and their crystal structures determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The crystal packing of these compounds, as well as the packing of related compounds retrieved from crystallographic databases, were analyzed with quantitative crystal potentials: total lattice energies and the cohesive energies of closest molecular pairs in the crystals were calculated. The arene-perfluoroarene recognition motif emerges as a dominant interaction in the non-hydrogen-bonding compounds studied here, to the point that asymmetric dimers formed over the stacking motif carry over to asymmetric units made of two molecules in the crystal both for pure compounds and for molecular complexes; however, inter-ring distances and angles range from 3.70 to 4.85 A and from 5 to 21 degrees , respectively. Pixel energy partitioning reveals that whenever aromatic rings stack, the largest cohesive energy contribution comes from dispersion, which roughly amounts to 20 kJ mol(-1) per phenyl ring, while the coulombic term is minor but significant enough to make a difference between the arene-arene or perfluoroarene-perfluoroarene interactions on the one hand, and arene-perfluoroarene interactions on the other, whereby the latter are favored by about 10 kJ mol(-1) per phenyl ring. No evidence of special interaction which can be attributed to HF confrontation was recognizable.

We have synthesised some planar polycyclic compounds, in which unsubstituted aromatic rings are condensed with perfluorinated aromatic rings, and have carried out a combined X-ray diffraction and computational study to analyse their self-recognition behaviour in crystalline phases. We compare our results with the parent hydrocarbons and with other compounds that have a variable degree of fluorination. Whereas the molecular planes in crystals of hydrocarbons with mono- or difluorinated aromatic rings or of perfluorinated compounds arrange themselves in V-shaped configurations, our present results show that perfluorinated rings tend to stack over unsubstituted rings even when these two moieties coexist in a condensed system, producing crystalline materials with parallel molecular layers with the arene-perfluoroarene recognition pattern. Our analysis shows that the packing energy of all these crystals is dispersion-dominated and that coulombic terms are selective rather than quantitatively predominant in crystals with arene-perfluoroarene interactions. No compelling proof of a special role of C-H...F interactions has been found.

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