The roles of charge transfer and polarization in non-covalent interactions: a perspective from ab initio valence bond methods.

Noncovalent interactions are ubiquitous and have been well recognized in chemistry, biology and material science. Yet, there are still recurring controversies over their natures, due to the wide range of noncovalent interaction terms. In this Essay, we employed the Valence Bond (VB) methods to address two types of interactions which recently have drawn intensive attention, i.e., the halogen bonding and the CH‧‧‧HC dihydrogen bonding. The VB methods have the advantage of interpreting molecular structures and properties in the term of electron-localized Lewis (resonance) states (structures), which thereby shed specific light on the alteration of the bonding patterns. Due to the electron localization nature of Lewis states, it is possible to define individually and measure both polarization and charge transfer effects which have different physical origins. We demonstrated that both the ab initio VB method and the block-localized wavefunction (BLW) method can provide consistent pictures for halogen bonding systems, where strong Lewis bases NH