Influence of solvent polarity on preferential solvation of molecular recognition probes in solvent mixtures

The association constants for formation of 1:1 complexes between a H-bond acceptor, tri-n-butylphosphine oxide, and a H-bond donor, 4-phenylazophenol, have been measured in a range of different solvent mixtures. Binary mixtures of n-octane and a more polar solvent (ether, ester, ketone, nitrile, sulfoxide, tertiary amide, and halogenated and aromatic solvents) have been investigated. Similar behavior was observed in all cases. When the concentration of the more polar solvent is low, the association constant is identical to that observed in pure n-octane. Once a threshold concentration of the more polar solvent in reached, the logarithm of the association constant decreases in direct proportion to the logarithm of the concentration of the more polar solvent. This indicates that one of the two solutes is preferentially solvated by the more polar solvent, and it is competition with this solvation equilibrium that determines the observed association constant. The concentration of the more polar solvent at which the onset of preferential solvation takes place depends on solvent polarity: 700 mM for toluene, 60 mM for 1,1,2,2-tetrachloroethane, 20 mM for the ether, ester, ketone, and nitrile, 0.2 mM for the tertiary amide, and 0.1 mM for the sulfoxide solvents. The results can be explained by a simple model that considers only pairwise interactions between specific sites on the surfaces of the solutes and solvents, which implies that the bulk properties of the solvent have little impact on solvation thermodynamics.