J. Guo, P. M. Tolstoy, B. Koeppe, N. S. Golubev, G. S. Denisov, S. N. Smirnov, H.-H. Limbach

«Hydrogen Bond Geometries and Proton Tautomerism of Homo-Conjugated Anions of Carboxylic Acids Studied via H/D Isotope Effects on 13C NMR Chemical Shifts»

J. Phys. Chem. A 2012, ASAP.
DOI: 10.1021/jp304943h.

Abstract:

Ten formally symmetric anionic OHO hydrogen bonded complexes, modeling Asp/Glu amino acid side chain interactions in nonaqueous environment (CDF3/CDF2Cl solution, 200–110 K) have been studied by 1H, 2H, and 13C NMR spectroscopy, i.e. intermolecularly H-bonded homoconjugated anions of acetic, chloroacetic, dichloroacetic, trifluoroacetic, trimethylacetic, and isobutyric acids, and intramolecularly H-bonded hydrogen succinate, hydrogen rac-dimethylsuccinate, hydrogen maleate, and hydrogen phthalate. In particular, primary H/D isotope effects on the hydrogen bond proton signals as well as secondary H/D isotope effects on the 13C signals of the carboxylic groups are reported and analyzed. We demonstrate that in most of the studied systems there is a degenerate proton tautomerism between O-H···O and O···H–O structures which is fast in the NMR time scale. The stronger is the proton donating ability of the acid, the shorter and more symmetric are the H-bonds in each tautomer of the homoconjugate. For the maleate and phthalate anions exhibiting intramolecular hydrogen bonds, evidence for symmetric single well potentials is obtained. We propose a correlation between H/D isotope effects on carboxylic carbon chemical shifts and the proton transfer coordinate, q1 =1/2(rOH – rHO), which allows us to estimate the desired OHO hydrogen bond geometries from the observed 13C NMR parameters, taking into account the degenerate proton tautomerism.