J. Chem. Sci. Vol. 129, No. 7, July 2017, pp. 911–917. © Indian Academy of Sciences. DOI 10.1007/s12039-017-1264-8 REGULAR ARTICLE Special Issue on THEORETICAL CHEMISTRY/CHEMICAL DYNAMICS Stabilisation of the [6]-prismane structure by silicon substitution† ASIF EQUBALa, SHWETHA SRINIVASANa and NARAYANASAMI SATHYAMURTHYa,b,∗ aDepartment of Chemical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali, Sector 81, SAS Nagar, Manauli, 140 306, India bDepartment of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, 208 016, India E-mail:
[email protected] MS received 9 January 2017; revised 6 March 2017; accepted 17 March 2017 Abstract. Using the second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation (MP2) theoretic method and the cc-pVDZ basis set, it is shown that with an increase in the number of carbon atoms substituted by silicon, the [6]-prismane structure becomes increasingly more stable, relative to the two isolated benzene (like) structures. A similar trend is observed for germanium substituted prismanes as well. Extending this investigation, the stability of benzene-capped fullerene (C60 fused with benzene) is also investigated. Keywords. [6]-Prismane; silabenzene; germanobenzene; benzene-capped fullerene. 1. Introduction readily achieved, 22–25 synthesis of [6]-prismane remained a challenge until Mehta and Padma 26,27 came up with Benzene is known to be highly stable. The interaction of a novel idea to synthesize it using Diels-Alder addi- two benzene molecules has been investigated over the tion and photocatalysis. [6]-Prismane has the structure years, and the parallel displaced and T-shaped geome- of a regular hexagonal prism wherein two parallel 6- tries have been shown to be comparable in stability from membered rings are co-joined face-to-face resulting a theoretical point of view.