Category Archives: Dispersive interactions

Thiophenol stacking motions

An investigation on the thiophenol dimer and trimer was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. The weakly-bound dimer adopts a stacked structure, while simultaneously maintaining a weak S-H···S hydrogen bond. Two isomers were detected for the dimer in the gas-phase. Notoriously, a large-amplitude motion was observed in one of the dimers, exchanging the proton donor and aceptor thiol groups.

 


New PCCP cover

New cover on PCCP! A work in collaboration with the Brooks H. Pate group in Virginia was featured as cover of PCCP in the July 28th issue. We show how transient chirality in the anesthetic sevoflurane is stabilized on formation of the dimer, as two different diastereoisomers (homochiral: left/left or right/right; heterochiral: left/right or right/left) are formed and distinguished by their spectral rotational signature. The structure of the dimers were fully resolved usign isotopic information, rendering information on the weak hydrogen bonds stabilizing the cluster.

PCCP cover sevo2sevo2


PCCP cover

A work on the intermolecular cluster pyridine-methane in collaboration with the group of  Walther Caminati has been chosen as cover of PCCP. Methane behaves in the complex as a noble gas, binding on top of the aromatic ring. This T-shape structure contrasts with the in-plane structure of other pyridine clusters involving halomethanes.

portada_PCCP_pyr-CH4