Hydrogen Bonding and the NMR Parameters in Dimethylformamide

The oxygen atom of dimethylformamide (DMF) is a good electron doaor site and in a proton donor solvent the solute-solvent interactions would include hydrogen bonding at this site. As this hydrogen bonding is expected to be relatively strong, it would predominate when both the lMF and the protonic acid are present at very low concentration in a solvent such as carbon tetrachloride, and the effect of this hydrogen bonding on the proton chemical shifts and coupling constants i n LMF can be observed. If the protonic acid is aromatic, such as phenol, and is in excess of the LMF, other form(s) of solut-olvent association would become significant and give rise to aromatic solvent induced shifts (ASIS), which would obscure the effect of hydrogen bonding at the oxygen site of the MF. The ASIS in DMF are well known, and the shifts have been attributed to the diamagnetic ring current effect of the aromatic solvent and specificsolut-olvent association.¹ More recently, the ASIS has been interpreted as the result of time-averaged general solvation around the polar site of the solute.²