FTIR study of hydrogen bonding interaction between fluorinated alcohol and unsaturated esters

The 1:1 complexes of two unsaturated esters with 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol (TFE) were investigated experimentally and computationally. The experimental observations of the spectral shifts of the OH-stretching vibrational transitions were obtained at 113 cm−1 for TFE–methyl acrylate (MA) and 92 cm−1 for TFE–vinyl acetate (VA). There are three docking sites in the two unsaturated esters for the incoming TFE. The predicted red shifts of the OH-stretching vibrational transitions were found to be larger for the OH⋯OC hydrogen bonded conformer than those for the OH⋯π and OH⋯O ones. The binding energies further prove that the OH⋯OC hydrogen bonded conformers are the most stable ones. On the basis of the DFT calculations as well as previous works, the carbonyl group is the best docking site for TFE. Furthermore, the thermodynamic equilibrium constants of TFE–MA and TFE–VA were obtained at 0.28 and 0.15 by combining the experimental spectra data and the DFT calculations. Consequently, the Gibbs free energies of formation were determined to be 3.2 and 4.8 kJ mol−1 for TFE–MA and TFE–VA, respectively. The quantum theory of atoms in molecules (AIM) and generalized Kohn−Sham energy decomposition analysis (GKS-EDA) were carried out for further characterization of the hydrogen bonding interactions. GKS-EDA shows an "electrostatic" dominated hydrogen bonding character for the OH⋯OC hydrogen bonds.