A covalent dative bond is formed by two atoms, where both electrons come from the same atom. The interdisciplinary research team from IOCB Prague led by Dana Nachtigalová and Pavel Hobza carried out a combined computational and experimental study showing a surprising stabilization of the covalent dative bond in Me3NBH3 complex with increasing solvent polarity.
Furthermore, the studies performed on the set of the dative complexes, with different atoms involved in the bond, show a linear correlation between the changes of binding free energies and solvation energies. Scientists confirmed the calculated results by measuring Raman and NMR spectroscopy.
In addition, other complexes having different types of the covalent dative bond, i.e., N → B, N → C, P → B, and P → C show the same solvent stabilizing effect, including larger systems composed by modified fullerene molecules.
The results of the study were published in Nature Communications.
Original article: Lo. R.; Manna, D.; Lamanec, M.; Dračínský, M.; Bouř, P.; Wu, T.; Bastien, G.; Kaleta, J.; Miriyala, V. M.; Špirko, V.; Mašínová, A.; Nachtigalová, D.; Hobza, P. The stability of covalent dative bond significantly increases with increasing solvent polarity. Nat. Comm. 13, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29806-3
