Complexity Parameters for Molecular Solids

Abstract

Structural complexity measures based on Shannon information entropy are widely used for inorganic crystal structures. However, the application of these parameters for molecular crystals requires essential modification since atoms in inorganic compounds usually possess more degrees of freedom. In this work, a novel scheme for the calculation of complexity parameters (HmolNet, HmolNet,tot) for molecular crystals is proposed as a sum of the complexity of each molecule, the complexity of intermolecular contacts, and the combined complexity of both. This scheme is tested for several molecular crystal structures.

Keywords

• information measure
• complexity
• crystal structure
• crystallographic net
• coordination number