Accurate calculation, prediction, and assignment of 3He NMR chemical shifts of helium-3-encapsulated fullerenes and fullerene derivatives.

Helium-3 NMR chemical shifts of various (3)He-encapsulated fullerenes ((3)He@C(n)()) and their derivatives have been calculated at the GIAO-B3LYP/3-21G and GIAO-HF/3-21G levels with AM1 and PM3 optimized structures. A good linear relationship between the computed (3)He NMR chemical shifts and the experimental data has been determined. Comparisons of the calculation methods of (3)He NMR chemical shifts show that GIAO-B3LYP/3-21G with AM1-optimized structures yields the best results. The corrected (3)He NMR chemical shifts were calculated from the correction equation that is obtained through linear regression fitting of the experimental and calculated (3)He NMR chemical shifts over a wide range of (3)He-encapsulated fullerene compounds. The corrected (3)He NMR chemical shifts match the experimental data very well. The current computational method can serve as a prediction tool and can be applied to the assignments and reassignments of the (3)He NMR chemical shifts of (3)He@C(n)() and their derivatives.