Catharine Esterhuysen and her colleagues at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, used theoretical calculations to study how dimethylaurate interacted with six hydrogen bond donors including HF, HCN and NH3.This study expands their previous work showing that Au(I) can be a hydrogen bond acceptor for water.2 Strong or moderate hydrogen bonds were found for five of the pairs. As expected, the Au(I)···H–X bonds were weaker than those formed with the negative auride ion, but surprisingly the bonds with HF and HCN were more stabilising than their analogues with [(CO)4Co] –, which contains a negatively charged Co– centre.
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The original article can be read below and is free to access until 27th April 2017.
Gold setting the “gold standard” among transition metals as a hydrogen bond acceptor – a theoretical investigation
Ferdinand Groenewald, Helgard G. Raubenheimer, Jan Dillen and Catharine Esterhuysen*
Dalton Trans., 2017, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C7DT00329C