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The hydrogen bond plays a key role in weak directional intermolecular interactions. It is operative in determining molecular conformation and aggregation, and controls the function of many chemical systems, ranging from inorganic, organic to biological molecules. Although an enormous amount of spectroscopic information has been collected about hydrogen-bond formation between molecules with closed-shell electronic configuration, the details of such interactions between open-shell radicals and closed-shell molecules are still rare. Here we report on an investigation of hydrogen-bonded complexes between pyrroline-type as well as piperidine-type neutral nitroxide radicals and an alcohol, i.e., 2-propanol. These nitroxide radicals are commonly used as EPR spin labels and probes. To obtain information on the geometry of the complexes and their electronic structure, multi-resonance EPR techniques at various microwave frequencies (X-, Q-, W-band, 244 GHz) have been employed in conjunction with DFT calculations. The planar five-membered ring system of the pyrroline-type nitroxide radical was found to form exclusively well-defined in-plane σ-type hydrogen-bonded complexes with one 2-propanol molecule in the first solvation shell in frozen solution. The measured hyperfine parameters of the hydrogen-bridge proton and the internal magnetic parameters describing the electron Zeeman and the electron-nuclear hyperfine and nuclear quadrupole interactions are in good agreement with values predicted by state-of-the-art DFT calculations. In contrast, multi-resonance EPR on the non-planar six-membered ring system of the piperidine-type nitroxide radical (TEMPOL) reveals a more complex situation, i.e., a mixture of a σ-type with, presumably, an out-of-plane π-type complex, both present in comparable fraction in frozen solution. For TEMPOL, the DFT calculations failed to predict magnetic interaction parameters that are in good agreement with experiment, apparently due to the considerable flexibility of the nitroxide and hydrogen-bonded complex. The detailed information about nitroxide/solvent complexes is of particular importance for Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) and site-directed spin-labeling EPR studies that employ nitroxides as polarizing agents or spin labels, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a ‘first-principles’ methodology for the calculation of the parameters that are required for the simulation of nuclear resonance vibrational spectra (NRVS) of molecular systems. Formulae are given for the intensities of vibrational transitions corresponding to the so-called single- and double-phonon contributions to the NRVS signal. The method is also valid for those vibrations that are not in the high-frequency/low-temperature limit. We have rigorously treated the issue of orientational averaging of the Lamb–Mössbauer factor and the effect of the neglect of its anisotropy on the calculated NRVS pattern. Normal mode composition factors are determined in a compact form as appropriate components of an orthogonal matrix that diagonalizes the Hessian matrix. The method is illustrated by simulating the NRVS spectra and the partial vibrational density of states of [FeO(H2O)5]2+ on the basis of vibrational frequencies and normal mode composition factors obtained from density functional theory (DFT) calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]