Hydrogen bonding by alcohols and amines

The pure base calorimetric method has been used to determine the enthalpies of hydrogen bond complex formation between aliphatic amines and alcohols. The enthalpies of complexation for the series methanol-n-butanol bonding with triethylamine increase with decreasing alkyl chain length in accordance with the electron donating properties of alkyl groups. Unexpectedly, the enthalpies for the complexes of n-butanol with tributylamine, tripropylamine, and triethylamine increase with decreasing alkyl chain length.Primary and secondary amines form hydrogen bonded complexes with n-butanol in which the amine protons form an NH···O bond with the alcohol and the alcohol hydroxyl proton donates a proton to the amine nitrogen. The difference in enthalpy of complex formation between tertiary amines and secondary amines is largely accounted for by the involvement of the amine proton of the secondary amine. Primary amines, like secondary amines, donate only one proton to the complex with n-butanol but have a larger complex enthalpy than secondary amines probably because of steric hindrance and differences in basicity.