A new look at the ylidic bond in phosphorus ylides and related compounds: energy decomposition analysis combined with a domain-averaged fermi hole analysis.

Geometries and bond dissociation energies of the ylide compounds H2CPH3, H2CPMe3, H2CPF3, (BH2)2CPH3, H2CNH3, H2CAsH3, H2SiPH3, and (BH2)2SiPH3 have been calculated using ab initio (MP2, CBS-QB3) and DFT (B3LYP, BP86) methods. The nature of the ylidic bond R2E1−E2X3 was investigated with an energy decomposition analysis and with the domain-averaged Fermi hole (DAFH) analysis. The results of the latter method indicate that the peculiar features of the ylidic bond can be understood in terms of donor−acceptor interactions between closed-shell R2E1 and E2X3 fragments. The DAFH analysis clearly shows that there are two bonding contributions to the ylidic bond. The strength of the donor and acceptor contributions to the attractive orbital interactions can be estimated from the energy decomposition analysis (EDA) calculations, which give also the contributions of the electrostatic attraction and the Pauli repulsion of the chemical bonding. The EDA and DAFH results clearly show that the orbital interactions take ...