Solvation of fluoro-acetonitrile in water by 2D-IR spectroscopy: A combined experimental-computational study

The solvent dynamics around fluorinated acetonitrile is characterized by 2-dimensional infrared spectroscopy and atomistic simulations. The lineshape of the linear infrared spectrum is better captured by semiempirical (density functional tight binding) mixed quantum mechanical/molecular mechanics simulations, whereas force field simulations with multipolar interactions yield lineshapes that are significantly too narrow. For the solvent dynamics, a relatively slow time scale of 2 ps is found from the experiments and supported by the mixed quantum mechanical/molecular mechanics simulations. With multipolar force fields fitted to the available thermodynamical data, the time scale is considerably faster - on the 0.5 ps time scale. The simulations provide evidence for a well established CF-HOH hydrogen bond (population of 25%) which is found from the radial distribution function g(r) from both, force field and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics simulations.