Semiempirical mo studies on the proton transfer equilibria of amides

Intramolecular proton transfer equilibria of acetamide and methyl carbamate have been studied by AMI MO calculations, and the results are compared with those of the MNDO method. It was found that the two semi- empirical methods predict essentially the same proton transfer mechanism, but MNDO tends to overestimate the activation barriers. Participation of one solvate vater in the proton transfer led to a considerable lovering of the activation barrier, by nearly the same amount, in both methods. One notable conflict between the two methods was that the methoxy-O-protonated form of methyl carbamate, in the gas phase, can be a local energy minimum with MNDO, whereas it leads to dissociation into two species Instead of an optimized structure with AM1. It was concluded that the MNDO method can be useful for this type of process, especially when one is interested in the relative activation barriers only.