Cooperative enhancement of water binding to crownophane by multiple hydrogen bonds: analysis by high level ab initio calculations.

The intermolecular interaction energy of the model system of the water-crownophane complex was analyzed. The water molecule has four hydrogen bonds, with the two hydrogen-donating phenolic hydroxy groups and two hydrogen-accepting oxygen atoms of the poly-oxyethylene chain of the crownophane in the complex. The MP2/6-311G(2d,2p) level calculations of the model system of the complex (hydrogen donating unit + hydrogen accepting unit + water) indicate that the binding energy of the water is 21.85 kcal/mol and that the hydrogen bond cooperativity increases the binding energy as much as 3.67 kcal/mol. The calculated interaction energies depend on the basis set, while the basis set dependence of the cooperative increment is negligible. Most of the cooperative increment is covered by the HF level calculation, which suggests that the major source of the hydrogen bond cooperativity in this system has its origin in induction. The BLYP/6-311G** and PW91/6-311G** level interaction energies of the model system are close to the MP2/6-311G** interaction energies, which suggests that the DFT calculations with these functionals are useful methods to evaluated the interactions of hydrogen bonded systems.