Intramolecular hydrogen tunneling in 2-chloromalonaldehyde trapped in solid para-hydrogen

Double Proton Transfer Across a Table: The Formic Acid Dimer-Fluorobenzene Complex

Proton transfer via tunneling is a fundamental quantum‐mechanical phenomenon. We report rotational spectroscopy measurements of this process in the complex of the formic acid dimer with fluorobenzene. The assignment of the spectrum indicates that this complex exists in the form of a π–π stacked structure. Each rotational transition of the parent isotopologue exhibits splitting. Isotopic substitution experiments show that the spectral splitting results from double‐proton transfer tunneling in the formic acid dimer. Presence of fluorobenzene as a neighboring molecule does not quench the double proton transfer in the formic acid dimer but decreases its tunneling splitting from 341(3) MHz to 267.608(1) MHz. Calculations suggest that the presence of the weakly bounded fluorobenzene does not influence the activation energy of the proton transfer. The fluorobenzene is reoriented with respect to the formic acid dimer during the course of the reaction, slowing down the proton transfer motion.

Heavy-Atom Tunneling in Semibullvalenes: How Driving Force, Substituents, and Environment Influence the Tunneling Rates

The Cope rearrangement of selectively deuterated isotopomers of 1,5-dimethylsemibullvalene 2 a and 3,7-dicyano-1,5-dimethylsemibullvalene 2 b were studied in cryogenic matrices. In both semibullvalenes the Cope rearrangement is governed by heavy-atom tunneling. The driving force for the rearrangements is the small difference in the zero-point vibrational energies of the isotopomers. To evaluate the effect of the driving force on the tunneling probability in 2 a and 2 b, two different pairs of isotopomers were studied for each of the semibullvalenes. The reaction rates for the rearrangement of 2 b in cryogenic matrices were found to be smaller than the ones of 2 a under similar conditions, whereas differences in the driving force do not influence the rates. Small curvature tunneling (SCT) calculations suggest that the reduced tunneling rate of 2 b compared to that of 2 a results from a change in the shape of the potential energy barrier. The tunneling probability of the semibullvalenes strongly depends on the matrix environment; however, for 2 a in a qualitatively different way than for 2 b.