Abstract
Less conventional non-covalent interactions such as chalcogen bonds attract the attention
of researchers in various fields (organocatalysis, material sciences, biological chemistry,
…). We present here useful descriptors to easily discriminate the structures in which
chalcogen bonds involving selenium are observed. Our study focused on organoselenium
compounds as chalcogen bond donors and on molecular entities, as chalcogen bond acceptors,
containing N, O, S, Se, and Te atoms or aromatic rings. For conventional chalcogen
bonds (C–Se⋯X, with X = N, O, S, Se, or Te), the combination of the C–Se⋯X angle and
the distance between X and the C–Se-C plane proved to be most relevant for identification
of chalcogen bonds. For chalcogen⋯π bonds, the most relevant parameters are a combination
of the C–Se⋯X angle and the angle between the C–Se bond and the normal to the aromatic
ring plane.
Key words
organoselenated compounds - chalcogen bond - CSD search - crystal structure - geometric
descriptors - chalcogen-pi interactions
