A theoretical investigation of the rotational barriers of peroxyformic acid

The internal rotational barriers in peroxyformic acid have been studied employing ab initio MO calculations. The C-O and O-O rotational barriers were calculated to be 7.68 and 1.04 $\text{kcal}\text{mol}$, respectively. The relatively low O-O rotational barrier is attributed to a balance between electron repulsion and hydrogen bonding in the syn chelated conformer.