Although aromaticity is a concept in chemistry, in the last years, special efforts have been carried out in order to propose theoretical strategies to quantify it as a property of molecular rings. Among them, perhaps the computation of nucleus independent chemical shifts (NICSs) is the most commonly used, since it is possible to calculate it in an easy and fast way with most used quantum chemistry software. However, contradicting assignments of aromaticity by NICS and other methods have been reported in the literature, especially in studies concerning inorganic chemistry. In this Article is proposed a new and simple strategy to use the NICS information to assess aromaticity, identifying the point along the axis perpendicular to the molecular plane where the in-plane component of NICS becomes zero; it is called free of in-plane component NICS (FiPC-NICS). This spatial point is proposed as secure to consider NICS as an aromaticity descriptor; this simple proposal is evaluated in borazine and cyclotriphosphazenes. The results are compared with carefully examined aromatic stabilization energies and magnetically induced current-density analysis.

The electron delocalization of benzene (C6H6) and hexafluorobenzene (C6F6) was analyzed in terms of the induced magnetic field, nucleus-independent chemical shift (NICS), and ring current strength (RCS). The computed out-of-plane component of the induced magnetic field at a distance (r) greater than or equal to 1.0 Å above the ring center correlates well (R2>0.99) with the RCS value. According to these criteria, fluorination has two effects on the C6 skeleton; concomitantly, the resonant effects diminish the π electron delocalization and the inductive effects decrease the charge density at the ring center and therefore reduce the magnitude of the paratropic current generated in this region. The equilibrium between both effects decreases aromaticity in the fluorinated benzene derivatives. These results can be extrapolated to determine the aromaticity of any derivative within the series of fluorinated benzene derivatives (C6H(6−n)Fn, where n=1–5).

Here, we analyze the possibility of predicting local and global current densities in a series of bicyclic hydrocarbons with 4n and 4n+2 -electrons from the nucleus-independent chemical shifts (NICS) computations....

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