Orbital Engineering in Chemistry
Eluvathingal D. Jemmis, Sagar Ghorai
Abstract
Abstract During the Search for a relationship between boranes and allotropes of elemental boron, several chemical problems came up: mechanism of 1,2‐shift in vinyl cations, relative stability of polyhedral boranes, carboranes, pyramidal cations, Non‐planar 2π aromaticity, pseudo π* aromaticity, sequential dehydrogenation and polycondensation of polyhedral boranes, design of stuffed boron fullerenes and C−C bond making and breaking processes belong to this group. A common thread that runs through these projects is the use of frontier molecular orbitals to design, control and explain chemical observations. Such manipulation of molecular orbitals as a design element is introduced here as Orbital Engineering which continues to help in 2D boron also.