On the extent of intramolecular hydrogen bonding in gas-phase and hydrated 1,2-ethanediol

We investigate the quantum dynamical nature of hydrogen bonding in 1,2-ethanediol and monohydrated 1,2-ethanediol using different levels of ab initio theory. Global full-dimensional potential energy surfaces were constructed from PW91/cc-pVDZ, B3LYP/cc-pVDZ, and MP2/cc-pVDZ ab initio data for gas-phase and monohydrated 1,2-ethanediol, using a modified Shepard interpolation scheme. Zero-point energies and nuclear vibrational wave functions were calculated on these surfaces using the quantum diffusion Monte Carlo algorithm. The nature of intra- and intermolecular hydrogen bonding in these molecules was investigated by considering a ground-state nuclear vibrational wavefunction with reduced complete nuclear permutation and inversion (CNPI) symmetry. Separate wavefunction histograms were determined from the ground-state nuclear vibrational wavefunction by projection into bondlength coordinates. The O-H and O-O wavefunction histograms and vibrationally averaged distances were then used to probe the extent of intra- and intermolecular hydrogen bonding. From these data, we conclude that gas-phase ethanediol may possess a weak hydrogen bond, with a relatively short O-O distance but no detectable proton delocalization. Monohydrated ethanediol was found to exhibit no intramolecular hydrogen bonding but instead possessed two intermolecular hydrogen bonds, indicated by both shortening of the O-O distance and significant proton delocalization. The degree of proton delocalization and shortening of the vibrationally averaged O-O distance was found to be dependent on the ab initio method used to generate the potential energy surface (PES) data set.