Structure and NLO properties of halogen (F, Cl) substituted formic acid dimers

•Trans–trans form of halogenated formic acid dimer is more stable.•Non-symmetric structures enhance polarizability and hyperpolarizability.•Fluorine and chlorine atoms in formic acid dimer increase NLO properties.•Chlorinated formic acid dimers are good candidate for nonlinear optical materials.•Hydrogen bonding increases the Rayleigh intensity components of the light.

In this work, using ab initio and density functional theory (DFT) methods halogen substituted formic acid (FA) dimer is studied. The dimer stability is due to the hydrogen bonds, either conventional (OH⋯O, OH⋯F, OH⋯Cl) or non-conventional (CH⋯O, CH⋯F, CH⋯Cl). Among all the dimers, trans–trans form is more stable than the trans–cis, and cis–cis form. Basis set extrapolated counterpoise corrected interaction energy results for the FA dimer are in excellent agreement with BSSE corrected MP2 interaction energy. Symmetry Adopted Perturbation Theory (SAPT) analysis reveals that the electrostatic effect plays a dominant role in stabilization among the dimers with maximum interaction energy. Chlorine substituted FA dimer has high hyperpolarizability, which makes them excellent candidate for nonlinear optical materials (NLO). The halogen substituted formic acid dimers have higher stability and polarizability value than the unsubstituted formic acid dimer. The hyperpolarizability values depend on the geometrical structures of halogenated formic acid dimers than the type of hydrogen bonds. The small excitation energy and HOMO–LUMO gap in the halogenated formic acid dimer has led to the strong nonlinear optical response. The depolarization ratio and Rayleigh scattering increases in formic acid dimer after the halogen atom substitution.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide