Keywords
Baird
Möbius
Clar Π sextet
Hirsch
- Abstract 50
- PDF (Español) 43
Abstract
Molecular aromaticity, like so many other basic notions in chemistry, is not a well-defined concept due to its unobservable nature. Despite its imprecise nature, it is a concept of utmost importance. In this review, we first briefly review the history of aro-maticity and its quantum nature. We demonstrate that, despite the lack of a precise definition, several very simple electron-counting rules exist that are followed by a large number of organic and inorganic aromatic compounds. Finally, we comment on the main types of aromaticity and analyze the most common ways of quantifying aromaticity, highlighting the fact that different descriptors do not speak always with the same voice.
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