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Abstract
Poater et al. (PVHBS) questioned our proposal for a new type of bond, collective interactions, CI1, between certain species with a general formula Mn+AX3m‒ using an energy decomposition analysis, EDA.2,3 Here, we first explain what is not well understood by PVHBS and use their own data to show that their work confirms the existence of collective bonding. Before going further we should emphasize that unlike our methodology, the theory of interacting quantum atoms (IQA)4, conventional EDA analyses cannot assess the nature of a given interatomic interactions, e.g., M…A, within Mn+AX3m‒ complexes. EDA can only provide a picture of the inter-fragment interactions between the M and the atoms in AX3 fragments.
