Yu. A. Serguchev, I. I. Chernobaev, and L. F. Lur'eWe have found that the para selectivity of chlorobenzene chlorination increases in the presence of the synthesized complexes and molecular complexes of antimony pentachloride with crown ethers, formed in solution. We show that complexes of antimony trichloride with crown ethers also initiate radical addition of chlorine to the aromatic ring of chlorobenzene and toluene.The most widely used and economically favorable processes for chlorination of aromatic compounds are technologies using Lewis acid catalysts (SbCl 3 , SbCl 5 , FeCl 3 , AlCl 3 , SnCl 4 , etc.). An important problem in processes for chlorination of chlorobenzene is obtaining reaction mixtures with as high a content of the para isomer of dichlorobenzene as possible, since the demand for it is higher than for the ortho isomer. With this goal, Lewis catalysts are usually used with organic sulfur compounds. In this case, the para/ortho ratio for the dichlorobenzenes increases approximately from 1.5-1.9 [1] to 3.3 or higher [2][3][4].In order to improve the para selectivity in chlorination of aromatic compounds, earlier we used a new approach involving the use of complexes of ferric chloride with crown ethers as chlorination catalysts [5]. In that paper, we showed that the selectivity of chlorination of chlorobenzene in the para position increases in the presence of the studied complexes, up to a para/ortho ratio for the dichlorobenzene isomers equal to 2.05-2.65. However, in that paper, we did not establish the correlation between the catalytic activity and the structural features of complexes of FeCl 3 with crown compounds, due to the lack of literature data on the structure of the studied complexes.In this work, we studied the effect on the rate and selectivity of chlorobenzene chlorination from the structure of molecular and cationic complexes of antimony(III) and antimony(V) chlorides with crown ethers having different macrocycle sizes: 18-crown-6 (18C6), 15-crown-5 (15C5), 12-crown-4 (12C4), and dibenzo-18-crown-6 (DB18C6).According to literature data [6], antimony pentachloride does not form stable complexes with intracavity coordination of the Sb(V) atom with the oxygen atoms of the crown ethers. They have not been successfully isolated from solutions in pure form, and therefore chlorination of chlorobenzene in the presence of these complexes occurs in homogeneous solution. We modeled the structure of these complexes by a quantum-chemical calculation using density functional theory (DFT) (we used the hybrid functional B3LYP) in a 3-21G basis, taking into account the effect of the solvent (the PCM method) using the program GAMESS. The structures obtained for SbCl 5 ·15C5 (1a), SbCl 5 ·DB18C6 (1b) are shown in Fig. 1. Characteristic features of these complexes include their electroneutrality and the presence of only one coordination bond Sb(V)-O with calculated bond lengths 2.20-2.24 Å and bond formation energy~34 kJ/mol, which lets us assign them to the class of molecular complexes.