Reply to a Comment on "The Nature of Chalcogen-Bonding-Type Tellurium-Nitrogen Interactions"

We reply to the comment by J.-M. Mewes, A. Hansen and S. Grimme (MHG), who challenged the accuracy of our r_e value for the N⋅⋅⋅Te distance in (C₆ F₅ )Te(CH₂ )₃ NMe₂ determined by gas electron diffraction (GED). We conclusively demonstrate that MHG's quoted reference calculations are less accurate than they claim for solid state and gas phase. We show by higher level calculations, that we did not miss substantial contributions from open-chain conformers. Refinements on simulated scattering data show that such contributions would have had only an almost negligible effect on r_e (N⋅⋅⋅Te). MHG suggested the use of a H0-tuned GFN method for calculating vibrational corrections r_a -r_e , but this did not change these values substantially. Alternative amplitude calculations using higher level analytic harmonic and numeric cubic force fields (PBE0-D3BJ/def2-TZVP) yield a GED value for r_e (N⋅⋅⋅Te)=2.852(25) Å that is well within the experimental error of our original value 2.918(31) Å but far from the 2.67(8) Å predicted by MHG. A now improved error estimation accounts for inaccuracies in the calculated auxiliary values. The gas/solid difference of the weak N⋅⋅⋅Te interaction is in a realistic range compared to other systems involving weak chemical interactions.