On the Harmonic Oscillator Model of Electron Delocalization (HOMED) index and its application to heteroatomic π-electron systems

Abstract

The HOMA (Harmonic Oscillator Model of Aromaticity) index, reformulated in 1993, has been very often applied to describe π-electron delocalization for mono- and polycyclic π-electron systems. However, different measures of π-electron delocalization were employed for the CC, CX, and XY bonds, and this index seems to be inappropriate for compounds containing heteroatoms. In order to describe properly various resonance effects (σ-π hyperconjugation, n-π conjugation, π-π conjugation, and aromaticity) possible for heteroatomic π-electron systems, some modifications, based on the original HOMA idea, were proposed and tested for simple DFT structures containing C, N, and O atoms. An abbreviation HOMED was used for the modified index. © 2010 by the authors.