Valence bond and molecular orbital studies of the A–F bond lengths in some AFn type molecules and their fluorinated cations

The results of ab initio MP2(full)/cc-pVTZ and DFT MPW1PW91/cc-pVTZ molecular orbital calculations of the bond lengths are reported for non-hypercoordinate and hypercoordinate systems of the general type AFnq+, with q≥0 and A = N, P, O, S and Cl. They show that except for OF42+ the bond lengths decrease as the cationic character increases. Increased-valence structures are used to provide valence bond (VB) rationalizations for the bond length shortenings. In these valence bond structures, the degree of multiple bonding increases as the cationic character increases.