title: Hydrogen bonding between formic acid and water: complete stabilization of the intrinsically unstable conformer.
abstract: We studied hydrogen bonding between formic acid (FA) and water in solid argon and identified the first water complex with the higher-energy conformer cis-FA. In sharp contrast to cis-FA monomer, cis-FA interacting with water is very stable at low temperatures, which was explained by strong O-H...O hydrogen bonding. These benchmark results show that hydrogen bonding can terminate proton tunneling reactions and efficiently stabilize intrinsically unstable conformational structures in complex asymmetrical hydrogen-bonded networks. This general effect occurs when the energy difference between conformers is smaller than the hydrogen bond interaction energy, which opens perspectives in chemistry on intrinsically unstable conformers.
authors: Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 55, FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland.
authors: Kseniya
authors: K
authors: Marushkevich
authors: Leonid
authors: L
authors: Khriachtchev
authors: Markku
authors: M
authors: Räsänen
mesh_terms: D005561:Formates / Q000737:chemistry*; D006860:Hydrogen Bonding; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D013055:Spectrophotometry, Infrared; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D005561:Formates; D014867:Water; C030544:formic acid