Molecular similarity for small species: refining the isoelectronic index.

This paper tests a chemical-similarity model against properties of gas-phase neutral triatomic and four-atom molecules. The model is a variant of the Diatomics-in-Molecules (DIM) picture, which considers a molecule to be the superposition of all diatomic molecules that could be formed from adjacent atoms in the molecule. The variant is that adjacent atoms are counted as a diatomic molecule only if they are bonded. The tests consist of investigating whether molecules with the same number of electrons, computed by the adjacent-DIM model, have data more similar than do molecules selected at random. The tests vindicate the model for the heat of atomization and for the equilibrium constant for formation, they agree with the model with lesser confidence for the entropy and the partition function, and they show that the model fails for the ionization potential. The model applies with most confidence to molecules with the more electronegative atoms from rows 2 or 3 (those of greatest interest in organic chemistry) and with lesser confidence otherwise. For these properties and these molecules, the model passes graphical and statistical tests at least as well as does the traditional isoelectronic model. Thus, this work refines what may be called the isoelectronic index.