Halogen Bonding in Supramolecular Chemistry

A study is conducted to investigate halogen bonding in supramolecular chemistry. The study gives an overview of how computational methods have been applied to understand the nature of halogen bonding (XB) interactions, starting with quantum mechanics (QM) and moving on to methods based on classical force fields. QM is used to study weak intermolecular interactions as the characteristics of the noncovalently bonded system can be difficult to separate from other effects in condensed phases. Extensive investigations also reveal that halogen atoms are among the more electronegative elements, and covalently bonded halogens are usually considered to be electron rich.