Energies for cyclic and acyclic aggregations of adamantane and diamantane units sharing vertices, edges, or six-membered rings

Abstract

Diamondoids are hydrocarbons having a carbon scaffold comprised from polymer-like composites of adamantane cages. The present paper describes computed total energies and "SWB-tension" energies (often referred to as "strain" energies) for species having $n$ adamantane or diamantane units sharing pairwise: one carbon atom (spiro-[n]adamantane or spiro-[$n$]diamantane); one C-C bond (one-bond-sharing-[$n$]adamantane or one-bond-sharing-[$n$]diamantane); or one chair-shaped hexagon of carbon atoms (1234-helical-cata-[$n$]diamantanes). Each of the five investigated polymer-like types is considered either as an acyclic or a cyclic chain of adamantane- or diamantane-unit cages. With increasing $n$ values, SWB-tension energies for acyclic aggregates are found to increase linearly, while the net SWB-tension energies of cyclic aggregates often go thru a minimum at a suitable value of $n$. In all five cases, a limiting common energy per unit ($E/n$ ) is found to be approached by both cyclic and acyclic chains as $n\to \infty $, as revealed from plots of $E/n$ versus $1/n$ for acyclic chains and of $E/n$ versus $1/n^2$ for cyclic chains.