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Updated: Jan 5, 2026
Probing the Structure and Dynamics of Interfacial Water with Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Spectroscopy
Published on: May 27, 2018
Selenium Substitution-Induced Hydration Changes of Crown Ethers As Tools for Probing Water Interactions with
Lin Jin1, Bo Li1, Zhiliyu Cui1
1Sino-German Joint Research Lab for Space Biomaterials and Translational Technology, Synergetic Innovation Center of Flexible Electronics and Healthcare Engineering, School of Life Sciences , Northwestern Polytechnical University , Xi'an , Shaanxi 710072 , P. R. China.
Abstract:
Understanding of aqueous solutions is of significance to a wide range of fields. Crown macrocycles emerge as a new generation of model hosts for studying the chemistry of water and aqueous supramolecular chemistry. Herein, we present the oxacrown ether cyanobenzo-21-crown-7 ether (C7CN), and its selenium-containing counterpart selencrown ether C7SeCN possess only one chalcogen atom diverse in structure but exhibits dramatic difference in shape, solvation (e.g., hydration), and consequent thermodynamics of guest binding experimentally. The hydrogen bond strength of Se···H is similar to that of O···H, but theoretical calculations pointed out that there is a prominent electrostatic potential change for the entire molecule caused by Se substitution, which leads to the decrease of the interactions between water clusters and crown macrocycles thermodynamically and kinetically. Results established that C7CN and C7SeCN provide an easy-to-access model pair to exclusively probe water-solute interaction and host pocket wettability change caused by one atom substitution.
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