Despite the numerous publications describing the synthesis and electronic properties of fluorinated furan, thiophene and pyrrole, the systematic overview of their adsorption applications is still lacking. In this study, the effect of fluorination on the adsorption properties of furan (C4H4O), thiophene (C4H4S), pyrrole (C4H4NH) and benzene (C6H6) are investigated with the help of density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Herein, the adsorption energies of CH3X (X = F, Cl & Br) on C4H4O, C4H4S, C4H4NH and C6H6 and their fluorinated analogues are calculated using ωB97XD/6-31+G(d, p) level of theory. The results of the adsorption energies and symmetry adapted perturbation theory (SAPT0) reveal that the adsorption affinity of adsorbent is enhanced upon fluorination due to the increasing dispersion forces. To comprehensively investigate the variation in the electronic properties of nonfluorinated and fluorinated systems, the HOMO, LUMO orbitals and NBO charges are analyzed. The isosurfaces of orbitals show that the electron density is more localized onto the fluorinated adsorbents which are probably due to the presence of multiple electronegative fluorine atoms. Owing to the electron-withdrawing nature of fluorine, the electronic charges are transferred from CH3X to fluorinated adsorbents while the charges are shifted from nonfluorinated adsorbents to CH3X. Furthermore, the TD-DFT calculations reveal that the electronic transition energies are significantly decreased in most of the fluorinated complexes especially, CH3X@C4F4S and CH3X@C4F4NH. With these findings, it can be postulated that fluorine substitution can significantly surge the electronic and adsorption properties of sensor materials.
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