Ab Initio Calculations of Cooperativity Effects on Clusters of Methanol, Ethanol, 1-Propanol, and Methanethiol

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The results of ab initio calculations for cyclic clusters of methanol, ethanol, 1-propanol, and methanethiol are presented. Dimer, trimer, and tetramer clusters of all four compounds are studied, as are pentamer and hexamer clusters of methanol. From optimized clusters at HG/6--31G**, total energies and binding energies were calculated with both the HF and MP2 theories using the aug-cc-pVDZ basis set. Accurate binding energies were also calculated for the dimer and trimer of methanol using symmetry-adapted perturbation theory with the same basis set. Intermolecular and intramolecular distances, charge distribution of binding sites, binding energies, and equilibrium constants were computed to determine the hydrogen bond cooperativity effect for each species. The cooperativity effect, exclusive to hydrogen bonding systems, results form specific forces among the molecules, in particular charge-transfer processes and the greater importance of interactions between molecules not directly hydrogen bonded because of the longer range of the interactions. The ratios of equilibrium constants for forming multimer hydrogen bonds to that for dimer hydrogen bond formation increase rapidly with the cluster size, in contrast to the constant value commonly used in thermodynamic models for hydrogen bonding liquids.