Affinity capillary electrophoresis and density functional theory applied to binding constant determination and...

Affinity capillary electrophoresis (ACE) and quantum mechanical density functional theory (DFT) calculations have been employed for the investigation of noncovalent interactions between hexaarylbenzene-based receptor (R) and ammonium cation NH(4)(+). Firstly, by means of ACE, the binding constant of the NH(4)R(+) complex in methanol was estimated from the dependence of the effective electrophoretic mobility of the receptor R (in advance corrected by our earlier developed procedure to a reference temperature of 25°C) on the concentration of ammonium ion in the background electrolyte using non-linear regression analysis. The logarithmic form of the apparent binding (stability) constant of NH(4)R(+) complex in the methanolic background electrolyte (25 mM Tris, 50 mM chloroacetate, pH(MeOH) 7.8) was evaluated as log K(NH(4)R) = 4.03 ± 0.15. Secondly, the structural characteristics of NH(4)R(+) complex were determined by DFT calculations.