It’s not enough to be 3D and aromatic to be 3D aromatic
Misusing the term 3D aromaticity could put chemists on a slippery slope where the concept loses meaning
Just having a three-dimensional structure and aromatic properties doesn’t make a molecule 3D aromatic, scientists have found.
The team computationally analysed several compounds that had been classified as 3D aromatic, concluding that many of them are not. They believe it’s time to reconsider the concept. ‘If a term like 3D aromaticity isn’t used properly, it devaluates and eventually becomes useless for chemical bonding analyses and the applications that rest upon such analyses,’ says Henrik Ottosson from Uppsala University, Sweden, who led the study together with Miquel Solà of the University of Girona in Spain.