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Cyclic Octamer of Hydroxyl‐functionalized Cations with Net Charge Q =+8 e Kinetically Stabilized by a ‘Molecular Island’ of Cooperative Hydrogen Bonds
Author(s) -
Philipp Jule Kristin,
Fritsch Sebastian,
Ludwig Ralf
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
chemphyschem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.016
H-Index - 140
eISSN - 1439-7641
pISSN - 1439-4235
DOI - 10.1002/cphc.202000681
Subject(s) - chemistry , hydrogen bond , coulomb explosion , histone octamer , cationic polymerization , covalent bond , pyridinium , crystallography , ionic bonding , molecule , natural bond orbital , ion , computational chemistry , polymer chemistry , medicinal chemistry , organic chemistry , biochemistry , nucleosome , histone , gene , ionization
Cyclic octamers are well‐known structural motifs in chemistry, biology and physics. These include covalently bound cyclic octameric sulphur, cylic octa‐alkanes, cyclo‐octameric peptides as well as hydrogen‐bonded ring clusters of alcohols. In this work, we show that even calculated cyclic octamers of hydroxy‐functionalized pyridinium cations with a net charge Q =+8 e are kinetically stable. Eight positively charged cations are kept together by hydrogen bonding despite the strong Coulomb repulsive forces. Sufficiently long hydroxy‐octyl chains prevent “Coulomb explosion” by increasing the distance between the positive charges at the pyridinium rings, reducing the Coulomb repulsion and thus strengthen hydrogen bonds between the OH groups. The eightfold positively charged cyclic octamer shows spectroscopic properties similar to those obtained for hydrogen‐bonded neutral cyclic octamers of methanol. Thus, the area of the hydrogen bonded OH ring represents a ‘molecular island’ within an overall cationic environment. Although not observable, the spectroscopic properties and the correlated NBO parameters of the calculated cationic octamer support the detection of smaller cationic clusters in ionic liquids, which we observed despite the competition with ion pairs wherein attractive Coulomb forces enhance hydrogen bonding between cation and anion.