Molecular-level understanding of ground- and excited-state O-H...O hydrogen bonding involving the tyrosine side chain: a combined high-resolution laser spectroscopy and quantum chemistry study.

The present study combines both laser spectroscopy and ab initio calculations to investigate the intermolecular OH⋅⋅⋅O hydrogen bonding of complexes of the tyrosine side chain model chromophore compounds phenol (PH) and para-cresol (pCR) with H2 O, MeOH, PH and pCR in the ground (S0 ) state as well as in the electronic excited (S1 ) state. All the experimental and computational findings suggest that the H-bond strength increases in the S1 state and irrespective of the hydrogen bond acceptor used, the dispersion energy contribution to the total interaction energy is about 10-15 % higher in the S1 state compared to that in the S0 state. The alkyl-substituted (methyl; +I effect) H-bond acceptor forms a significantly stronger H bond both in the S0 and the S1 state compared to H2 O, whereas the aryl-substituted (phenyl; -R effect) H-bond donor shows a minute change in energy compared to H2 O. The theoretical study emphasizes the significant role of the dispersive interactions in the case of the pCR and PH dimers, in particular the CH⋅⋅⋅O and the CH⋅⋅⋅π interactions between the donor and acceptor subunits in controlling the structure and the energetics of the aromatic dimers. The aromatic dimers do not follow the acid-base formalism, which states that the stronger the base, the more red-shifted is the XH stretching frequency, and consequently the stronger is the H-bond strength. This is due to the significant contribution of the dispersion interaction to the total binding energy of these compounds.