Is Al₂Cl₆ aromatic? Cautions in superficial NICS interpretation

In this article, we employed the induced magnetic field method to show that the Al₂X₆ (X = F, Cl, Br, I) clusters cannot be classified as aromatic systems. Interestingly, even nucleus independent chemical shift (NICS) reveals the same conclusion when analyzed in greater detail, showing that a superficial analysis of this index can easily lead to incorrect interpretations. In view of the fact that the NICS index is extensively used by computational and theoretically oriented experimental chemists, this is an important warning against superficial analyses, as it can lead to erroneous chemical interpretation.