Unravelling the ultrafast dynamics of aqueous hydrogen bond networks with 2D IR vibrational echo spectroscopy
Keywords: Chemistry.

Water is one of the most important substances in the world. It is used in a wide range of technologies and is an essential ingredient in all living cells we know today. The structure of water molecule is simple, yet it can form extended and versatile hydrogen bond (HB) network. This ability gives water extraordinary properties, such as high boiling and melting point. At the same time, the hydrogen bond network is not static. The constant breaking and re-forming of hydrogen bond occurs on the picosecond timescale. This dynamic network facilitates many functions of water, including ions solvation, protein folding and electricity conduction. Understanding the structure and dynamics of these processes is therefore of great importance. Ultrafast infrared (IR) spectroscopies offer a great method for accessing the sub-picosecond to picoseconds dynamics while a system in an electronic ground state. During the past two decades, hydrogen bond dynamics has been investigated extensively using ultrafast IR spectroscopies. But many questions still exist such as the effect of ions and confinement on the hydrogen bonding dynamics and the relation between the anomalous proton diffusion in dilute solution and hydrogen bonding. In Chapter 3, we examined the nature of molecular anion hydrogen bonding. The CN stretch of selenocyanate anions (SeCN-) was used as the vibrational probe in heavy water D2O. We observed the non-Condon effect on the CN stretch whose transition dipole changes with the strength of hydrogen bonding with water. In addition, HB rearrangement dynamics reported by SeCN- is almost the same as was that of the OH stretch of HOD molecules. This result shows that this anion does not perturb the surrounding HB network significantly in the low salt concentration solution. This ionic perspective is important and complements the results using OD or OH stretch of HOD molecules, which can only probe the effect of ions in a high salt concentration condition. In Chapter 4, we used SeCN- as the probe to examine water dynamics in confinement, and I focused on the nano waterpool formed in reverse micelles. The water pool is surrounded by surfactants which are further solvated by organic hydrophobic solvents. For large reverse micelle whose diameter is larger than 4 nm, the water pool is usually divided into two regions: the core region where water dynamics is like that in pure water and the interface region where water dynamics is slowed significant due to the confinement. Here we used ultrafast IR spectroscopies to measure the orientational relaxation of SeCN-, which reflects its interaction with water molecules and how "rigid" the HB network is. Based on the comparison between linear IR decomposition and ultrafast anisotropy dynamics, we proposed a three-component model of water in large reverse micelles. The interface component should be further separated into two layers. One layer corresponds to water in contact with the surfactant head group and has very slow reorientation. The other layer corresponds to water molecules whose coordinating structure still resembles that of bulk but the dynamics is slowed down due to the perturbation from confinement. In Chapter 5 and 6, hydrogen bonding dynamics in concentrated salt and acid solutions were investigated. Through electrochemical method, it was found decades ago that proton has extraordinary ion mobility, about 6 times larger than that of cations of similar sizse, such as sodium, ammonium or lithium. The great difference between them results from the cation transport mechanism. In dilute solution, the main transport mechanism of proton is through relay mechanism where the identity of proton transfers from one water molecule to another. This minimizes the physical diffusion of the atoms and greatly increases the proton mobility. The mechanism is generally called Grotthuss mechanism, which was came up with by Grotthuss in 1806 though not on the molecular level. However, the step time of a single proton transfer event between two water molecules is difficult to observe experimentally. Here we used the CN stretch of methyl thiocyanate (MeSCN) as the vibrational probe. In concentrated hydrochloric solutions, it has two frequency resolved states. One state refers to water hydrogen bonded to the nitrogen lone pair while the other state corresponds to hydronium ion hydrogen bonded to the CN. Chemical exchange phenomenon was observed between these two states. Ab initio simulation done by our collaborator shows that the proton hopping is the dominate mechanism for chemical exchange. The comparison experiment done in lithium chloride solution provides further contrast between hydronium and other metal ions. Therefore, we were able to track proton hopping in a time-resolved manner for the first time. Extrapolation to the dilute limit demonstrates that the HB rearrangement in pure water is the driving force of proton hopping in dilute solution.