Gauche

A ligand such as ethylenediamine is not planar and has a spiral form (gauche) giving rise to further forms. When the direction of one C—C bond in one ethylenediamine is parallel to the 3-fold axis the isomer is termed the le( form, when it is inclined to the axis it is termed the ob form. 

Thermal stahility. Yor applications of LB films, temperature stability is an important parameter. Different teclmiques have been employed to study tliis property for mono- and multilayers of arachidate LB films. In general, an increase in temperature is connected witli a confonnational disorder in tire films and above 390 K tire order present in tire films seems to vanish completely [45, 46 and 45] However, a comprehensive picture for order-disorder transitions in mono- and multilayer systems cannot be given. Nevertlieless, some general properties are found in all systems [47]. Gauche confonnations mostly reside at tire ends of tire chains at room temperature, but are also present inside tire... 

Thermal stability. The tliennal stability of SAMs is, similarly to LB films, an important parameter for potential applications. It was found tliat SA films containing alkyl chains show some stability before an increase in tire number of gauche confonnations occurs, resulting in melting and irreversible changes in tire film. The disordering of tire... 

Similarly to LB films, the order of alkanetliiols on gold depending on temperature has been studied witli NEXAFS. It was observed tliat tire barrier for a gauche confonnation in a densely packed film is an order of magnitude higher tlian tliat of a free chain [48]. 

Example Hthanc is stable in the staggered gauche) con formation. The transition state for rotating a methyl group in ethane has the eclipsed con form at ion, A gcom etry optim i/ation start in g from an eclipsed eon formation yields th e tran sition state. 

VViberg K B and M A Murcko 1988. Rotational Barriers. 2. Energies of Alkane Rotamers. An Examination of Gauche Interactions. Journal of the American Chemical Society 110 8029-8038. 

Many of the torsional terms in the AMBER force field contain just one term from the cosine series expansion, but for some bonds it was found necessary to include more than one term. For example, to correctly model the tendency of O-C—C-O bonds to adopt a gauche conformation, a torsional potential with two terms was used for the O—C—C—O contribution ... 

With all-atom simulations the locations of the hydrogen atoms are known and so the order parameters can be calculated directly. Another structural property of interest is the ratio of trans conformations to gauche conformations for the CH2—CH2 bonds in the hydrocarbon tail. The trans gauche ratio can be estimated using a variety of experimental techniques such as Raman, infrared and NMR spectroscopy. 

The trans conformation corresponds to a torsion angle of 180°, the gauche(+) conformation to oni + 60° and the gauche -) conformation to -60°. These approximately correspond to the torsion anj of the three minimum energy conformations of butane. 

A pentane violation arises when there are successive gauche(+) and gauche(-) torsion angles in an alkane tin. 

Figure 4-18 The Potential Energy for Rotation of n-Butane About its Central Bond Axis. The anti conformer in the center is slightly lower in energy than the two gauche conformers.

We have it on good authority (Ege, 1998) that the gauche minimum on the potential energy coordinate is about 0.9 kcal moI higher in energy than the anti conformation. This establishes a two-state energy system for the stable conformers, gauche and anti (Fig. 4-19). 

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