Complexation-induced chemical shifts - ab initio parameterization of transferable bond anisotropies

Complexation-induced changes in proton chemical shifts provide a potent tool for conformational analysis, being highly dependent on intermolecular orientation. An important contribution to these shifts arises from the molecular magnetisability anisotropy, or more specifically from the anisotropy of certain groups, such as aromatic rings and unsaturated bonds. While the influence of aromatic rings has been well characterised via the ring current effect, unsaturated bonds have received much less attention and prediction of complexation shifts is hampered by the lack of accurate anisotropy parameters for these bonds. We have therefore used ab initio calculations at the HF/aug-cc-pVDZ level to obtain bond anisotropies for C–H, N–H, C=O, C=C, C=N, N=N, C=C, and C=N. Fitting the anisotropies to bond magnetic dipoles (the McConnell equation) gives non-transferable values for C–H and N–H bonds. We have therefore expanded in terms of bond magnetic dipoles, quadrupoles, and octopoles for double and triple bonds only, obtaining highly accurate shielding surfaces in all cases. The transferable nature of the anisotropies is confirmed by comparing with shifts obtained in larger molecules containing unsaturated bonds.