Hydrogen bonded systems, solvation clusters

The 17r<7 states also dominate the photoinduced processes in hydrogen-bonded chromophore-solvent clusters. The photoinduced hydrogen transfer reaction is experimentally and computationally well documented in clusters of phenol and indole with ammonia [14,16,32], There is no clear evidence for the existence of an excited-state proton transfer process in these systems [14], The same conclusion applies to bi functional chromophores solvated in finite clusters, such as 7HQ-ammonia and 7HQ-water clusters [15]. In future work, the photochemistry of larger and biologically relevant chromophores (such as tyrosine, tryptophan, or the DNA bases) should be investigated in a finite solvent environment. 

Hydrogen-bonded clusters are an important class of molecular clusters, among which small water clusters have received a considerable amount of attention [148, 149]. Solvated cluster ions have also been produced and studied [150, 151]. These solvated clusters provide ideal model systems to obtain microscopic infonnation about solvation effect and its influence on chemical reactions. 

The understanding of chemical reaction mechanisms in solution is often based on the nature of the interactions between reactants and solvent, which are governed by the physical properties of molecules, such as polarity, or by the possibility of bonds formation (e.g., hydrogen-bonding) and their dynamical evolution. The goal of the majority of works on molecular clusters is to try to fill the gap between the gas phase reaction and the condensed phase reaction by a step-by-step solvation of the reactive system. This approach will give useful... 

Dielectric constants cannot explain, quantitatively, most physicochemical properties and laws of solutions, and we shall soon see that they can become unimportant. The molecules of more polar solvents, which tend to cluster around the ions and dipole ions, produce a preferential or selective solvation that is reflected in measurements of such properties as solubility, acid—base equilibria, and reaction rates. Nonelectrostatic effects, such as the basicity of some solvents, their hydrogen-bonding, and the internal cohesion and the viscosity of mixtures, probably interfere with the electrostatic effects and thus reduce their actual influence. On the other hand, mixtures of water and nonaqueous solvents are enormously complicated systems, and their effective microscopic properties may be vastly different from their macroscopic properties, varying with the solute because of selective attraction of one of the solvents for the solute. 

Tryptophan, tyrosine, and phenylalanine rings are at once hydrophobic and polar. Their jc-electron systems may not only act as hydrogen bond acceptors, but also solvate cations. The amino acids, therefore, participate in a wide range of intra- and intermolecular interactions, and their hydrophobicity is considerably divergent in different proteic environments. In membrane proteins they tend to cluster near the water/membrane interface (Andersen et al., 1998). 

The cluster-continuum moder iUuslrated in scheme 1 was used to simulate the most common electrolytes of LIBs. The supra-molecular cluster applied to the inner ring (scheme 1) incorporates the mutual effect between salt and solvent molecules by including the first solvation shell of the salt. Due to the minor effect that the salt anion XT has on the reductive behavior of solvent molecules coordinated with Li, XT and the surrounding solvent molecules are not discussed in the current chapter. The bulk solvent effect in the second ring of scheme 1 is treated by polarized continuum models, such as PCM, conductor-like PCM (CPCM), isodensity PCM (IPCM), and self-consistent isodensity PCM (SCl-PCM), which were developed on the basis of the Onsager reaction field theory and are recognized to provide reliable results for systems without specific interactions such as hydrogen bond. 

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