DFT study of cisplatin@carbon nanohorns complexes.

This paper reports a quantum chemical investigation of the inclusion complex formation between a carbon nanohorn structure and cisplatin molecule, using the density functional theory (DFT) with the B3LYP functional and 6-31G(d,p)/LanL2DZ standard basis sets. The inclusion of the drug in host molecules such as carbon nanohorns (CNHs), aims to reduce the toxicity and enhance the effectiveness of cisplatin. In this work we carried out a search for minimum energy structures on the potential energy surface (PES) for CNH-cisplatin interaction, and then calculated the stabilization energy, charge distribution and NMR spectra, which can be of great aid for the experimental identification of the inclusion compound. Our results indicate that the CNH and cisplatin can indeed form stable inclusion complex, with the calculated (1)H NMR and (15)N NMR chemical shifts for cisplatin atoms revealing very substantial changes due to complex formation (~20ppm) that can be easily experimentally observed, which is helpful to the spectra assignment and the inclusion compound structural elucidation.