Understanding the influence of low-frequency vibrations on the hydrogen bonds of acetic acid and acetamide dimers.

Low-frequency vibrations coupled to high-frequency modes are known to influence the hydrogen bond strengths in a weakly interacting dimer. In this context, various acetic acid and acetamide dimers were analyzed using Møller-Plesset second-order perturbation (MP2) and density functional theory (DFT)-based approaches with explicit anharmonicity corrections. The computed low-frequency fundamentals as well as the high-frequency modes, which were found to be related to hydrogen bonding (OH/NH stretching modes), were analyzed and their computed intensities were correlated with their hydrogen-bond strengths/binding energies.