Intrinsic basis bonding analysis (IAO/IBO)

The IBBA program is used to perform a chemical bonding analysis of a previously computed Hartree-Fock or Kohn-Sham wave function. Options include the computation of partial charges, bond orders, and localized bond orbitals (i.e., orbitals which correspond to “chemical intuition” bonds). The localized orbitals can be visualized by exporting to xml files or molden files:

  ! the 'save' and 'orbital' directives are for illustration only here.
  ! This snipped would do the same without them.
  {df-rhf; save, 2101.2}
  {ibba; orbital,2101.2; save,2103.2}
  {put,xml,'orbs.xml'; orbital,2103.2; keepspherical; skipvirt}

Recommended programs for visualization include IboView (http://www.iboview.org) and the current and upcoming versions of jmol and jsmol (http://chemapps.stolaf.edu/jmol/).

Additionally, IBOs can also be used as a general choice for localized molecular orbitals (LMOs), since they are an exact representation of the input determinant wave function (i.e., IBOs are related to canonical occupied orbitals by a unitary transformation). IBOs are a particularly good choice for local correlation methods, since they are both very stable (also in the presence of diffuse basis sets, unlike Pipek-Mezey orbitals) and very fast to compute (faster even than Pipek-Mezey or Boys orbitals). If used as input to subsequent correlation calculations, the FREEZECORE directive should be used (see below).

Intrinsic bond orbitals (IBOs) and intrinsic atomic orbital charges (IAO charges) can be computed via {ibba,option1=value1,option2=value2,…; directive1; directive2, ...}

The techniques have been described and validated in

The first article should be cited if the IBBA program is used for bonding analysis. The second one should be cited if the program is used for deriving chemical transformations (curly arrows) in reaction mechanisms.

Regular options are:

Further specialist options:

1: $\vert\mathrm{IAO}\rangle=(1+o-\tilde o)P_{12}\vert\mathrm{minao}\rangle$
2: $\vert\mathrm{IAO}\rangle=(o {\tilde o}+(1-o)(1-\tilde o))P_{12}\vert\mathrm{minao}\rangle$
Both are described in the IAO article. In practice both produce indistinguishable results.

Additionally to the options, the following directives are supported: