Cyclic and ladder hydrogen bonded cyanamide oligomers: a density functional theory and many-body analysis approach

Abstract

This work reports hydrogen bonding interaction in cyclic and ladder oligomers using density functional theory method. Many-body analysis technique has been used to study the nature of interactions between different molecules and their contribution to the binding energy of a respective hydrogen bonded oligomers. Hydrogen bonds in cyclic trimer to pentamer are stronger than those in corresponding ladder structures. Cyanamide monomer shows the lowest energy at B3LYP/aug-cc-pvdz level among different methods used here with the same basis set. The geometrical parameters for cyanamide monomer obtained at B3LYP/aug-cc-pvdz level are in excellent agreement with the experimental determinations. Cyclic structures are more stable than the ladder. In cyclic oligomers not only total two-body energies, but higher body energies also contribute significantly to the binding energy of a respective complex whereas in ladder, only total two-body energies contribute significantly and higher-body energies are almost negligible for cyanamide trimer to pentamer.