Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0002-9134-1910

Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Chemistry

Reader 1

Daniel J. O’Leary

Reader 2

Jane M. Liu

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@ 2025 Thaer M Nasr

Abstract

Methanol titrations of partially deuterated diols dissolved in non-polar solvents such as CD2Cl2 and C6D6 provide 1H NMR measurements of OH/OD isotope shifts, diagnostic for the presence or absence of intramolecular hydrogen bonds under increasing protic solvent conditions. Understanding how intramolecular OH/OH bonds respond to solvent perturbations is important for advancing models of non-covalent interactions in catalysis. While conformationally rigid 1,3- and 1,4-diols have been extensively studied, the behavior of systems with labile intramolecular hydrogen bonds remains unexplored. A series of 1,6 diols (1-3) were synthesized from 2-adamantanone (4) and structurally confirmed via ¹H NMR and GCMS. These compounds, models for distal hydrogen bonds, were titrated with deuterated methanol to track isotope shifts indicative of relatively weak, non-persistent OH/OH interactions. These 1,6-diols act differently than rigid diols, whose intramolecular OH/OH hydrogen bonds persist in the presence of excess methanol. Specifically, these 1,6-diols exhibit a positive, non-persistent isotope shift mapped alongside the mole ratio of CD3OD/diol. Similar experiments are underway involving 1,3-disiloxanediols for a comparative analysis (7 – 8).

Available for download on Saturday, April 24, 2027

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