Discrimination of rotamers of aryl alcohol homologues by infrared-ultraviolet double-resonance spectroscopy in a supersonic jet

Infrared-ultraviolet double-resonance spectroscopic method was applied to the conformational investigation of rotamers of aryl alcohol. The objective was to produce and discriminate various structures of aryl alcohol homologues by putting stress on the OH stretching vibration which untangles the structural ambiguity and provides information regarding the acidity of different structures. Results suggest that different OH stretching frequencies are associated with different rotamers and that the ability of intramolecular hydrogen bonding with the benzene pi-electron decreases with an increase in alkyl chain length.