Solid-State 17 O NMR Study of CarboxylicAcid Dimers: Simultaneously Accessing Spectral Properties of Low-and High-Energy Tautomers

We report a solid-state 17O NMR study of several crystalline carboxylic acids. We found that, while each of these compounds forms discrete hydrogen-bonded dimers in the crystal lattice, their solid-state 17O magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR spectra display quite different features and different temperature dependencies. We showed that experimentally observed 17O NMR spectral behaviors can be explained as being due to thermal averaging between the two tautomers that are produced as a result of concerted double-hydrogen hopping dynamics within each dimer. In general, the two tautomers have different energies due to intramolecular interactions and crystal packing. From an analysis of variable-temperature 17O MAS NMR spectra, energy asymmetry between the two tautomers was experimentally determined for each of the carboxylic acid compounds studied. The same data analysis also offers an opportunity to simultaneously assess 17O NMR parameters in both low- and high-energy tautomers. We concluded that the periodic p...