The effects of perfluorination on carbohydrate–π interactions: computational studies of the interaction of benzene and hexafluorobenzene with fucose and cyclodextrin

The effect of benzene fluorination on C–H⋯π interactions is studied using a number of computational methods applied to a range of intermolecular complexes. High level wavefunction methods (CCSD(T)) predict a slightly greater interaction energy for complexes of benzene with methane or fucose, compared to corresponding complexes involving hexafluorobenzene. A number of more approximate treatments, DFT with the M06-2X functional, PM3-D* and MM methods, give interaction energies within 1 kcal mol−1 of the high level values, and also correctly predict that the interaction energy is slightly greater for benzene compared to hexafluorobenzene. However, the DFT-D model used here predicts that the interaction energy is slightly greater for hexafluorobenzene. Molecular dynamics simulations, employing the GLYCAM-06 force field, validated here, are used to model the complexes of benzene and hexafluorobenzene with β-cyclodextrin in aqueous solution. We predict the binding free energies of the complexes to be within 0.5 kcal mol−1, and suggest that the different chemical shifts of the H5 protons observed in the two complexes arise from their slightly different structures, rather than from different binding energies.