It’s been a long time since I last posted something and so many things have happened in our research group! I should catch up with them in short but times have just been quite hectic.

I’m glad to publicly thank Prof. Frank Weinhold’s gesture to include this blog in the bibliography section of the new NBO6.0 website under the NBO-Related Websites tab.

Here is a contribution from Igor Marques at the University of Aveiro in Portugal (Group Website); the original text can be found as a comment in the original NBO Visualization post but it is pretty much the same thing you can find in this post. Here is a link to Chemcraft’s website. Thanks for sharing this, Igor!

=> Examples provided by Igor Marques used Chemcraft Version 1.7, build 365 <=

In the Gaussian input, with the NBORead option included under the population keyword, we should include the PLOT option as illustrated below. The gfoldprint keyword will print the basis set to the output file in the old G03 format. Some visualization programs require a certain format of the basis set to be printed to the output file in order to plot orbitals and other surfaces like the electron density; therefore, if you want to play safe, use gfoldprint, gfprint and gfinput in the same line. gfprint will print the basis set as a list but in the new G09 format, whereas gfinput will print the basis set using Gaussian’s own input format. (The used level of theory and number of shared processors are shown as illustrations only; also the Opt keyword is not fundamental to the visualization of the NBO’s)

%chk=filename.chk
%nprocshared=8

#P b3lyp/6-311++g** Opt pop=(full,nboread) gfoldprint 
filename

0 1
molecular coordinates
$NBO BNDIDX PLOT $END

this will generate files from *.31 to *.41
For the visualization of NBOs, you’ll need FILE.31 and FILE.37. Open FILE.31 from chemcraft. It will automatically detect FILE.37 (if in the same directory).

Tools > Orbitals > Render molecular orbitals

select the NBOs of interest (whcih are in the same order of the output),

Adjust settings > OK

On the left side of the window, select the NBO of interest and then click on ‘show isosurface’. Adjust the remaining settings. To represent another orbital, click on ‘keep this surface’ and then select another orbital from the rendered set and follow the previous steps.

Some Considerations:

> It’s possible to open a formated checkpoint file, containing the NBOs, in chemcraft.
Gaussian input:

%Chk=filename.chk
%nprocshared=4
#P b3lyp/6-311++g** Opt pop=(full,nboread,savenbo) gfoldprint 
filename

0 1
molecular coordinates
$NBO BNDIDX $END

the procedure is identical, but it is only necessary to read the *fchk file and then render the desired orbitals.
However, two problems might arise:
a) Orbitals in the checkpoint are reordered, thus requiring some careful inspection of the output.
b) Sometimes, for a larger molecule, the checkpoint might not be properly saved and the Gaussian job (as previously reported – http://goo.gl/DrSgA ) will end with:

Failed in SchOr1 in NBStor.
Error termination via Lnk1e in /data/programs/g09/l607.exe at Wed Mar 6 15:27:33 2013.

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As usual, thanks to all for reading/commenting/rating this and other posts in this blog!