Protonated methanol, electrostatic potential

FIGURE 4 2 Electro static potential maps of methanol and chloro methane The electrostatic potential is most negative near oxygen in methanol and near chlorine in chloromethane The most positive region is near the O—H proton in methanol and near the methyl group in chloromethane... 

The S—H bond is less polai than the O—H bond, as is cleaiTy seen in the electrostatic potential maps of Figure 15.7. The decreased polarity of the S—H bond, especially the decreased positive character of the proton, causes hydrogen bonding to be absent in thiols. Thus, methanethiol (CH3SH) is a gas at room temperature (bp 6°C), whereas methanol (CH3OH) is a liquid (bp 65°C). 

The question of methanol protonation was revisited by Shah et al. (237, 238), who used first-principles calculations to study the adsorption of methanol in chabazite and sodalite. The computational demands of this technique are such that only the most symmetrical zeolite lattices are accessible at present, but this limitation is sure to change in the future. Pseudopotentials were used to model the core electrons, verified by reproduction of the lattice parameter of a-quartz and the gas-phase geometry of methanol. In chabazite, methanol was found to be adsorbed in the 8-ring channel of the structure. The optimized structure corresponds to the ion-paired complex, previously designated as a saddle point on the basis of cluster calculations. No stable minimum was found corresponding to the neutral complex. Shah et al. (237) concluded that any barrier to protonation is more than compensated for by the electrostatic potential within the 8-ring. 

An electrostatic potential map for methanol shows partial negative charge at the oxygen and partial positive charge at the hydroxyl proton. 

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