NMR Study of Solvation Effect on the Geometry of Proton-Bound Homodimers of Increasing Size

Hydrogen bond geometries in the proton-bound homodimers of quinoline and acridine derivatives in an aprotic polar solution have been experimentally studied using 1H NMR at 120 K. The reported results show that an increase of the dielectric permittivity of the medium results in contraction of the N···N distance. The degree of contraction depends on the homodimer’s size and its substituent-specific solvation features. Neither of these effects can be reproduced using conventional implicit solvent models employed in computational studies. In general, the N···N distance in the homodimers of pyridine, quinoline, and acridine derivatives decreases in the sequence gas phase > solid state > polar solvent.