Hydrogen bonded rings, chains and lassos: the case of t-butyl alcohol clusters

Abstract

Infrared OH stretching spectra of hydrogen bonded 2-methyl-propan-2-ol (t-butyl alcohol) clusters are investigated by ragout-jet FTIR spectroscopy. A spectral difference technique is used to discriminate approximately between neighbouring cluster sizes. Dimers, trimers and cyclic tetramers can be detected along with larger clusters, which exhibit a surprisingly structured vibrational fingerprint. Comparison is made to the spectra of related alcohols and to energetic and harmonic vibrational predictions from electronic structure calculations. The experimentally observed 32% increase in OH stretching wavenumber shift from methanol dimer to t-butyl alcohol dimer is reproduced at the HF/3-21G level (+33%). It is also qualitatively correct at the MP2/6-311G level (+15%), whereas it has the wrong sign at the B3LYP/6-311G level (-5%) and is negligible at the HF/6-311G level, disregarding anharmonic effects. The cyclic tetramer of t-butyl alcohol is found to be particularly stable due to a favourable up-down alternation of the bulky t-butyl groups. Beyond the t-butyl alcohol tetramer, lasso structures are found to be energetically competitive with simple ring structures. A many-body decomposition shows that this is due to a reduced cooperativity in the sterically hindered pentamer ring. The resulting thermodynamic and kinetic relevance of cyclic tetramers is discussed.