On the chemical behavior of C60 hosting H2O and other isoelectronic neutral molecules

The density functional theory (DFT) was used to investigate the chemical behavior of C-60 hosting neutral guest molecules (NGM). The deformed atoms in molecules (DAM) allowed identifying the regions of electron density depletion and accumulation. The studied NGM are CH4, NH3, H2O, and HF. Based on dipole moment and polarizabilities analyses it is predicted that the NGM@C-60 should be more soluble in polar solvents than C-60. The deformations on the surface electron density of the fullerenes explain this finding, which might be relevant for further applications of these systems. It was found that the intrinsic reactivity of studied NGM@C-60 is only moderately higher than that of C-60. This trend is supported by the global reactivity indexes and the frontier orbitals analyses. The free radical scavenging activity of the studied systems, via single electron transfer, was found to be strongly dependent on the chemical nature of the reacting free radical. The presence of the studied NGM inside the C-60 influences only to some extent the reactivity of C-60 toward free radicals. The distortion of the electron density on the C-60 cage, caused by the NGM, is directly related to the electron withdrawing capacity of the later.