Hydrogen-bonded structures of pyrrole-solvent clusters: infrared cavity ringdown spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations.

The hydrogen-bonded structures of pyrrole-solvent (H(2)O,CH(3)OH,C(2)H(5)OH) binary clusters were studied by the combination of experimental and theoretical techniques. Infrared cavity ringdown spectroscopy was applied to observe the NH and OH stretching vibrations of the clusters. The structures, binding energies, and normal modes of the binary clusters were obtained by quantum chemical calculations of the MP2/6-31+G(d,p) and B3LYP/6-311+G(d,p) levels. For the 1:1 clusters of pyrrole-H(2)O, pyrrole-CH(3)OH, and pyrrole-C(2)H(5)OH, the hydrogen-bonded NH stretching vibrations were observed at 3448, 3414, and 3408 cm(-1), respectively. They were redshifted from the NH stretching vibration of the pyrrole monomer, and the amounts of the redshift were proportional to the proton affinities of the solvent molecules. MP2 level calculations revealed that the sigma-type (NH...O) hydrogen-bonded structures had 7.6-9.0 kJ/mol larger binding energies than the pi-type structures (OH...pi electron cloud of pyrrole), and that the vibrational frequencies of the sigma-type structures are consistent with the observed spectra. In addition to the 1:1 clusters, the NH or OH stretching vibrations of pyrrole-CH(3)OH binary clusters were observed at 3432 and 3549 cm(-1). Among three optimized structures of the pyrrole-(CH(3)OH)(2), the sigma-pi bridge pyrrole-(CH(3)OH)(2) provided a reasonable agreement between the observed and calculated vibrational frequencies. For the pyrrole-H(2)O binary clusters, three new bands were observed at 3414, 3435, and 3541 cm(-1). These bands are consistent with the calculated NH and OH stretching vibrations of the (pyrrole)(2)-H(2)O cluster, which has a closed cyclic hydrogen-bonded structure.