Compressed hydrogen-bond effects in the pressure-frozen chloroacetic acid.

The competing effects of squeezed OH...O bonds, destabilizing the H-atom position, and of displaced hydrogen donor and acceptor groups, favouring the ordered H-atom sites, have been tuned by pressure in the pressure-frozen dichloroacetic acid. Its structure has been determined at 0.1, 0.7, 0.9 and 1.4 GPa: in this pressure range the crystals are stable in the monoclinic space group P2(1)/n. The molecules are O-H...O hydrogen bonded into dimers, which in turn interact via a unique pattern of halogen...halogen contacts. Between 0.1 and 1.4 GPa the OH...O bond is squeezed from 2.674 (13) to 2.632 (9) A. Within the pressure range investigated the hydrogen bonds are squeezed and the shear displacement of the molecules compensate, and the H atoms remain ordered.