Ethanol monomers and dimers revisited: a Raman study of conformational preferences and argon nanocoating effects.

The gauche-trans conformational distribution in ethanol can be determined from the OH stretching Raman spectrum of seeded supersonic jet expansions, which thus provides a sensitive conformational thermometer. Depending on the rare gas mixture, one, two or four ethanol dimer conformations are abundant. Their conformational assignment is facilitated by the observation of hydrogen bond acceptor modes, which have similar Raman cross sections but much inferior infrared intensities than donor modes. Ethanol monomers and dimers can be progressively Ar-coated, and the resulting spectra may be compared with those in a bulk argon matrix. The low frequency range of torsional transitions provides some evidence for conformation-changing transitions in Raman jet spectra.