Interplay between hydrogen bond formation and multicenter pi-electron delocalization: intermolecular hydrogen bonds

The interplay between aromatic electron delocalization and intermolecular hydrogen bonding is thoroughly investigated using multicenter delocalization analysis. The effect on the hydrogen bond strength of aromatic electron delocalization within the acceptor and donor molecules is determined by means of the interaction energies between monomers, calculated at the B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) level of theory. This magnitude is compared to variations of multicenter electron delocalization indices and covalent hydrogen bond indices, which are shown to correlate perfectly with the relative values of the interaction energies for the different complexes studied. The multicenter electron delocalization indices and covalent bond indices have been computed using the quantum theory of atoms in molecules approach. All the hydrogen bonds are formed with oxygen as the acceptor atom; however, the atom bonded to the donor hydrogen has been either oxygen or nitrogen. The water-water complex is taken as reference, where the donor and acceptor molecular environments are modified by substituting the hydrogens and the hydroxyl group by phenol, furan, and pyrrole aromatic rings. The results here shown match perfectly with the qualitative expectations derived from the resonance model.