Reply to the 'Comment on "exploiting electronic strategies to stabilize a planar tetracoordinate carbon in cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons"' by V. S. Thimmakondu, Chem. Commun., 2019, DOI: 10.1039/c9cc04639a

The effectiveness of our proposed approach to stabilize a planar tetracoordinate carbon (ptC) in cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, introduced in the title article, is unquestionable as our exhaustive searches on the singlet and triplet potential energy surfaces of the new ptC molecules identified as viable species are reproducible. Besides, the T₁ diagnostic value for the Si₂C₅H₂ system reported in the comment seems to be the T₁ amplitudes. We recomputed the T₁ diagnostic value using different software (Gaussian and ORCA), which gave similar values to that reported in our communication. Additionally, a multiconfigurational (complete active space SCF) calculation fully confirms the mono-configurational character of the questioned Si₂C₅H₂ ptC structure. We accept that the linear isomer for the C₇H₂ system, in the triplet electronic state, is competitive with the isomer reported in our article, in the singlet electronic state, as mentioned in the title comment. However, this is a minor correction that does not affect the primary goal and main conclusions of our communication.