Article by Assoc. Prof. Cina Foroutan-Nejad in Chemical Science

14 March 2023

The concept of aromaticity is a cornerstone of chemistry but very similar to some other concepts like chemical bonds, aromaticity has no operator in quantum mechanics. Therefore, measuring aromaticity is not a straightforward task. While IUPAC suggests three main criteria for assessing aromaticity based on structural symmetry, energetic stability, and magnetic response properties, there are serious discrepancies among the experts in the field. Long-standing debates among experts motivated two of the authors of this work to collect the opinions of experts from both experimental and theoretical chemistry in one article. Miquel Sola and Cina Foroutan-Nejad started this task by preparing a set of questions that were later modified by Gabriel Merno and Israel Fernandez. These questions later were sent to several experts and their responses were gathered and used to write the present perspective article regarding the concept of aromaticity. We hope this brief article presents diverse ideas of chemists with different backgrounds to the chemical community.