Studies of intramolecular hydrogen bonding in protonated and non-protonated hexahydropyridinobenzodioxins

The conformational stability of hexahydropyridobenzodioxin and related derivatives in both protonated and non-protonated forms have been investigated by means of ab initio molecular orbital methods as well as semi-empirical AM1 and PM3 methods. One of the cis conformers (cis2e) has been found to be most stable due to the formation of an intramolecular hydrogen bond, other conformers including the trans isomer cannot form this interaction but are of different stability because of the orientation of the polar oxygens and the nitrogen. The effect of the intramolecular hydrogen bonding on the stability of hexahydropyridobenzodioxin and its methylated derivatives has been examined using various basis sets levels. In protonated form, both the semi-empirical and ab initio calculations give excellent agreement in energetic order; however, different orderings of conformer stabilities are observed by different computational methods in non-protonated form. The results provide insight into the intramolecular hydrogen bonding in computational studies of biologically important molecules.