Benefits of Categorizing Noncovalent Bonds Based on Hydrogen, Halogen, Chalcogen, and Pnictogen Bonds

Recent IUPAC recommendations define the halogen bond, the chalcogen bond, and the pnictogen bond as the interactions between nucleophilic sites and electrophilic elements of groups 17, 16, and 15 of the periodic table. In a recent paper Robin Taylor states that, the use of these three terms should be “deprecated” and he raises concern about the proposal that we made in a scientific perspective on this journal to use these three terms, along with the hydrogen bond one, as the core of a taxonomy of chemical interactions, wherein names refer to the electrophile group/atom. Here, we show how Taylor's position conflicts not only with the authoritative position of IUPAC, but also with the common practices of the chemists’ community. Our proposed naming scheme which refers to the electrophile group/atom far from concealing key information, as assumed by Taylor, enables for a precise language whose terminological richness is instrumental in communication efficiency. Our naming scheme presents the advantage to be invariant with respect to the evolving understanding of the nature of chemical interactions and to be tailored to automated database mining, ontology construction, and AI-driven structure–property prediction.