Evidence for intramolecular OH⋯π hydrogen bonding in unsaturated alcohols from UV photoelectron spectroscopy

The gas phase He(I) photoelectron (PE) spectra of several unsaturated alcohols (1–11) have been measured and analysed with respect to intramolecular OH⋯π hydrogen bonding. Evidence for such a hydrogen bond has been detected in the spectra of 2-allylphenol (1) and 2-phenylethan-1-ol (3). 1 exists as a conformational mixture of a hydrogen bonded form 1a and an open form 1b in a composition of roughly 2:1. A strong ionization band (IPv=10.01 eV; where IPv is the vertical ionization potential) is assigned to the ethylenic C C double bond in the major conformer (1a) and a weak band (IPv=9.72 eV) to that of the minor conformer (1b). The latter IP coincides with the corresponding ionization of allylbenzene. In the series of ω-phenylalkan-1-ols, compound 3 exhibits an unusually low nπ(O) ionization indicating hydrogen bonding between the OH group and the π electron system of the phenyl ring. The higher homologs 4 and 5 prefer ‘open’ conformations without such interaction. The PE spectra of alkenols such as but-3-en-1-ol (7) and pent-4-en-1-ol (8) as well as of alkynols such as but-3-yn-1-ol (10) and pent-4-yn-1-ol (11) are consistent with OH⋯π hydrogen bonded conformers. The methanol/ethylene hetero-dimer has a T-shaped structure, as indicated by B3LYP/6-311++G(d) calculations, with a binding energy of 5.65 kJ mol−1.