Hydrogen-bond-reversal symmetry and its violation in ice nanotubes

Edge-sharing water prisms

Regular-shaped water clusters and nanostructures can be of particular interest for the self-assembly of complex structures and functional materials involving water molecules. Polyhedral water clusters are the most well studied. The low-energy structures of water hexamer, octamer and decamer are shaped like right prisms. The cavities of gas hydrates also have a polyhedral shape. Ice nanotubes are of no less interest both as configurations of global energy minima and in terms of possible applications. This article presents the results of the first systematic study of the structure and properties of a special class of water clusters. It reveals different combinations of three right prisms sharing an edge. According to modern calculations, the configurations of global energy minima of water clusters with the number of molecules being eighteen and twenty have this structure precisely. The topological characteristics of the edge-sharing water prisms are studied and the formulas for estimating the residual entropy are obtained. For these clusters (3-prisms), the usefulness of using a discrete model of intermolecular interaction [strong-weak-effective-bond model], previously developed for polyhedral water clusters, is shown. Calculations of the binding energy were performed using the non-additive Amoeba potential. To understand the relative stability of 3-prisms among other cluster forms, we use the structures recently reported in a published database containing over 3 × 106 unique water cluster networks (H2O)N of size N = 3-25 [Rakshit et al., J. Chem. Phys., 2019, 151(21), 214307, DOI: 10.1063/1.5128378].

Some Brief Notes on Theoretical and Experimental Investigations of Intramolecular Hydrogen Bonding

A review of selected literature data related to intramolecular hydrogen bonding in ortho-hydroxyaryl Schiff bases, ortho-hydroxyaryl ketones, ortho-hydroxyaryl amides, proton sponges and ortho-hydroxyaryl Mannich bases is presented. The paper reports on the application of experimental spectroscopic measurements (IR and NMR) and quantum-mechanical calculations for investigations of the proton transfer processes, the potential energy curves, tautomeric equilibrium, aromaticity etc. Finally, the equilibrium between the intra- and inter-molecular hydrogen bonds in amides is discussed.

Classification of hydrogen bond flips in small water polyhedra applied to concerted proton tunneling

Recently a new mechanism of proton tunneling in a prism-like water hexamer was revealed [Richardson et al., Science, 2016, 351, 1310]. The tunneling motion involves the concerted breaking of two hydrogen bonds and rotations of two nearest water molecules. Eventually, this structural transformation means flipping one of the hydrogen bonds without the creation of defects in the hydrogen bond network. On the surface of polyhedral water clusters, there are five essentially different types of hydrogen bonds, and only two of them can be changed in this manner. In this article, the topological classification of such transformations for five small water polyhedra: triangular, pentagonal, and hexagonal prisms as well as cube and polyhedron 4⁴5⁴, consisting of four square and four pentagonal faces, is presented. Our classification includes the enumeration of all possible one-bond-flips with consideration of the types of hydrogen bonds on the polyhedral surface. Attention is paid to the most stable proton configurations which can be studied in experiments. It was established that a number of one-bond-flip transitions between the low energy configurations are possible in clusters in the shape of triangular and pentagonal prisms.