Investigations of Novel Hydrogen Bonds

Although the hydrogen bonding interaction was discovered little over a century ago, it was formally recognized as hydrogen bond (H-bond) in 1920.[1]  Linus Pauling defined the H-bond in his famous book “The Nature of Chemical Bond” as an interaction between a hydrogen atom covalently bonded to an electronegative atom (read oxygen, nitrogen, halogens) and another electronegative atom.[2]  With the increasing sophistication in the experimental techniques, many novel interactions were discovered in 90’s. Some of these interactions would fall in the H-bonding domain, but their acceptance as H-bond would depend on who is refereeing your paper if it did not involve the conventional H-bond acceptor/donors referred to above. Our focus was on the unconventional H-bonds involving the unconventional H-bond acceptors such as sulfur atom and donors such as SH and CH groups. I will present a few salient results obtained during these investigations.


References:

1. Latimer WM, Rodebush WH, J Am Chem Soc 42, 1419–1433, (1920)

2. L. Pauling. The Nature of the Chemical Bond, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY (1939).