DFT study of the hydrogen bond strength and IR spectra of formic, oxalic, glyoxylic and pyruvic acids in vacuum, acetone and water solution

Infrared Reflection-Absorption Spectroscopy of α-Keto Acids at the Air-Water Interface: Effects of Chain Length and Headgroup on Environmentally Relevant Surfactant Films

A variety of organic surfactants are found at air-water interfaces in natural environments, including on the surfaces of aqueous aerosols. The structure and morphology of these organic films can have profound impacts on material transfer between the gas and condensed phases, the optical properties of atmospheric aerosol, and chemical processing at air-water interfaces. Combined, these effects can have significant impacts on climate via radiative forcing, but our understanding of organic films at air-water interfaces is incomplete. Here, we examine the impact of the polar headgroup and alkyl tail length on the structure and morphology of organic monolayers at the air-water interfaces. First, we focus on the substituted carboxylic acids, α-keto acids, using Langmuir isotherms and infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (IR-RAS) to elucidate key structures and phase behaviors of α-keto acids with a range of surface activities. We show that the structure of α-keto acids, both soluble and insoluble, at water surfaces is a compromise between van der Waals interactions of the hydrocarbon tail and hydrogen bonding interactions involving the polar headgroup. Then, we use this new data set regarding α-keto acid films at water surfaces to examine the role of the polar headgroup on organic films using a similar substituted carboxylic acid (α-hydroxystearic acid), an unsubstituted carboxylic acid (stearic acid), and an alcohol (stearyl alcohol). We show that the polar headgroup and its hydrogen bonding interactions can significantly affect the orientation of amphiphiles at air-water interfaces. Here, we provide side-by-side comparisons of Langmuir isotherms and IR-RA spectra for a set of environmentally relevant organic amphiphiles with a range of alkyl tail lengths and polar headgroup structures.

A DFT Study of the Hydrogen Bonded Structures of Pyruvic Acid–Water Complexes

The molecular geometries of the possible conformations of pyruvic acid–water complexes (PA-(H2O)n = 1–4) have been fully optimized at DFT/B3LYP/6-311G++ (d, p) levels of calculation. Among several optimized molecular clusters, we present here the most stable molecular arrangements obtained when one, two, three, and four water molecules are hydrogen-bonded to a central pyruvic acid molecule. Appropriate topological and geometrical parameters are considered primary indicators of H-bond strength. Atoms in molecules analysis shows that pyruvic acid can form a ring structure with water, and the molecular structures are stabilized by both strong O–H⋅⋅⋅O and C–H⋅⋅⋅O hydrogen bonds. In large clusters, classical O–H⋅⋅⋅O hydrogen bonds still exist between water molecules, and a cage-like structure is built around some parts of the central molecule of pyruvic acid.

Infrared spectroscopy of 2-oxo-octanoic acid in multiple phases

Alpha-keto acids are environmentally and biologically relevant species whose chemistry has been shown to be influenced by their local environment. Vibrational spectroscopy provides useful ways to probe the potential inter- and intramolecular interactions available to them in several phases. We measure and compare the IR spectra of 2-oxo-octanoic acid (2OOA) in the gas phase, solid phase, and at the air-water interface. With theoretical support, we assign many of the vibrational modes in each of the spectra. In the gas phase, two types of conformers are identified and distinguished, with the intramolecularly H-bonded form being the dominant type, while the second conformer type identified does not have an intramolecular hydrogen bond. The van der Waals interactions between molecules in solid 2OOA manifest C-H and CO vibrations lower in energy than in the gas phase and we propose an intermolecular hydrogen bonding scheme for the solid phase. At the air-water interface the hydrocarbon tails of 2OOA do interact with each other while the carbonyls appear to interact with water in the subphase, but not with neighboring 2OOA as might be expected of a closely packed surfactant film.

Probing the dynamics of the photo-induced decarboxylation of neutral and ionic pyruvic acid

The dynamics of the electronically excited pyruvic acid (PA) and of its unimolecular decomposition upon single photon ionization are investigated by means of a table top fs laser and VUV...

Primary photodissociation mechanisms of pyruvic acid on S1: observation of methylhydroxycarbene and its chemical reaction in the gas phase

Following S₁ ← S₀ excitation at 351 nm, pyruvic acid dissociates mainly into methylhydroxycarbene (MHC) and CO₂. Some MHC molecules isomerize to more stable acetaldehyde and vinyl alcohol; the remaining MHC is stabilized and reacts bimolecularly.

Electrophilicity of oxalic acid monomer is enhanced in the dimer by intermolecular proton transfer

We have analyzed the effect of excess electron attachment on the network of hydrogen bonds in the oxalic acid dimer (OA)₂. The most stable anionic structures may be viewed as complexes of a neutral hydrogenated moiety HOA˙ coordinated to an anionic deprotonated moiety (OA-H)^-. HOA˙ acts as a double proton donor and (OA-H)^- as a double proton acceptor. Thus the excess electron attachment drives intermolecular proton transfer. We have identified several cyclic hydrogen bonded structures of (OA)₂^-. Their stability has been analyzed in terms of the stability of the involved conformers, the energetic penalty for deformation of these conformers to the geometry of the dimer, and the two-body interaction energy between the deformed HOA˙ and (OA-H)^-. There are at least seven isomers of (OA)₂^- with stabilization energies in the range of 1.26-1.39 eV. These energies are dominated by attractive two-body interaction energies. The anions are vertically bound electronically by 3.0-3.4 eV and adiabatically bound by at least 1.6 eV. The computational predictions are consistent with the anion photoelectron spectrum of (OA)₂^-. The spectrum consists of a broad feature, with an onset of 2.5 eV and spanning to 4.3 eV. The electron vertical detachment energy (VDE) is assigned to be 3.3 eV.

Hydration of the simplest α-keto acid: a rotational spectroscopic and ab initio study of the pyruvic acid–water complex

Non-covalent interactions analysis of hydrogen bonding in the pyruvic acid water complex.

Affinity of hydroxyapatite (001) and (010) surfaces to formic and alendronic acids: a quantum-mechanical and infrared study

The affinity of the (001) and of the water reacted (010)WR hydroxyapatite surfaces towards formic and alendronic acids is studied with density functional theory (PBE functional) using periodic boundary conditions based on Gaussian basis set. Structures, energetic of the adsorption and vibrational features of the adsorbates are computed in order to understand at the atomic level both the cariogenic processes (for the formic acid) and the features of anti-osteoporosis drugs (for the alendronic acid). For both molecules the interaction energy is very high on an absolute scale, and for all examined cases, it is higher on the (010)WR HA surface than on the (001) one. For the latter, a number of cases by which the acidic proton of the adsorbate is transferred to the HA surface are also characterized. For the formic acid case, experimental infrared spectra are also measured and the position and nature of the C=O stretching bands have been found to be in excellent agreement with the quantum mechanical simulations. For alendronic acid IR experiments are still not available and the present predicted infrared spectra will be useful as a guide to interpret future experimental studies.

Predicting hydration free energies using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations and multiple starting conformations

Molecular dynamics simulations in explicit solvent were applied to predict the hydration free energies for 23 small organic molecules in blind SAMPL2 test. We found good agreement with experimental results, with an RMS error of 2.82 kcal/mol over the whole set and 1.86 kcal/mol over all the molecules except several hydroxyl-rich compounds where we find evidence for a systematic error in the force field. We tested two different solvent models, TIP3P and TIP4P-Ew, and obtained very similar hydration free energies for these two models; the RMS difference was 0.64 kcal/mol. We found that preferred conformation of the carboxylic acids in water differs from that in vacuum. Surprisingly, this conformational change is not adequately sampled on simulation timescales, so we apply an umbrella sampling technique to include free energies associated with the conformational change. Overall, the results of this test reveal that the force field parameters for some groups of molecules (such as hydroxyl-rich compounds) still need to be improved, but for most compounds, accuracy was consistent with that seen in our previous tests.