Acidities under the Perspective of Energy Decomposition Analysis.

The rationalization of acid/base behavior is a central concern for chemistry and related fields. In this work, we describe an alternative approach toward the understanding of gas phase acidities based on the localized molecular orbital energy decomposition analysis (LMOEDA) method. Upon partitioning the molecules (and the corresponding anions) over the X-OH (or X-O) bond, we have observed a perfect correlation between the interaction energy of the two fragments and the acidity, as given by the energy difference between the anion and the neutral molecule.