Theoretical investigation of the hydrogen bond interactions of methanol and dimethylamine with hydrazone and its derivatives

The interactions between hydrogen bond donors (dimethylamine (DMA) and methanol (MeOH)) and acceptors (formaldehyde dimethylhydrazone, acetaldehyde N,N-dimethylhydrazone and N-nitrosodimethylamine) were theoretically investigated by DFT. The hydrogen bonding interactions were found on several bonding sites of the acceptors. The important properties of structure, binding energy, enthalpy of formation, Gibbs free energy of formation and equilibrium constant were investigated. Compared to the monomer, the DMA complexes show a small red shift of the NH-stretching vibrational transition but a significantly intensity enhancement. On the other hand, the MeOH complexes have a large red shift but a relatively small intensity enhancement of the OH-stretching transition. Atoms-in-molecules analysis revealed that several types of hydrogen bond interaction were present in the complexes. Since natural bond orbital analysis overestimated the effect of charge transfer, the more reliable localized molecular orbital energy decomposition analysis was performed and it shows that the major contribution to the total interaction energy is the electrostatic interaction. All these parameters suggest that the hydrogen bond donor strength of MeOH is substantially greater than DMA.