Simulations of 129Xe NMR chemical shift of atomic xenon dissolved in liquid benzene

The isotropic ¹²⁹Xe NMR chemical shift of atomic Xe dissolved in liquid benzene was simulated by combining classical molecular dynamics and quantum chemical calculations of ¹²⁹Xe nuclear magnetic shielding. Snapshots from the molecular dynamics trajectory of xenon atom in a periodic box of benzene molecules were used for the quantum chemical calculations of isotropic ¹²⁹Xe chemical shift using nonrelativistic density functional theory as well as relativistic Breit?CPauli perturbation corrections. Thus, the correlation and relativistic effects as well as the temperature and dynamics effects could be included in the calculations. Theoretical results are in a very good agreement with the experimental data. The most of the experimentally observed isotropic ¹²⁹Xe shift was recovered in the nonrelativistic dynamical region, while the relativistic effects explain of about 8% of the total ¹²⁹Xe chemical shift.