Infrared spectroscopy of warm and neutral phenol-water clusters

Although many studies have been reported on structures of neutral water clusters, most of experimental information has been restricted to their most stable structures. With elevation of temperature, however, transient structures as well as higher energy stable structures can be formed, as recently demonstrated in small-sized neat water clusters (Zischang, J.; Suhm, M. A. J. Chem. Phys. 2014, 140, 064312). In the present study, we performed infrared spectroscopy of warm phenol-(H₂O)₂, which is an analogue of (H₂O)₃ concerning the hydrogen-bond structure, in order to overcome the size uncertainty in the neat water cluster study. The strict size selection was achieved by infrared-ultraviolet double-resonance spectroscopy combined with mass spectrometry. The temperature control of the cluster was accomplished by the reduction of the stagnation pressure of the jet expansion and the internal energy selective detection of the cluster. A remarkable shift to higher frequency of the phenolic OH stretch band was observed with elevation of temperature, suggesting deformation of the cluster from the most stable cyclic structure to the transient chain-type structure.