Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Vol.111, No.22, 6173-6180, 2007
Solvation in binary mixtures of water and polar aprotic solvents: Theoretical calculations of the concentrations of solvent-water hydrogen-bonded species and application to thermosolvatochromism of polarity probes
Thermo-solvatochromism of two polarity probes, 2,6-diphenyl-4-(2,4,6-triphenyl- pyridinium-1-yl)phenolate, RB, and 2,6-dichloro-4-(2,4,6-triphenylpyridinium-1-yl) phenolate, WB, in aqueous acetone, Me2CO, and aqueous dimethylsulfoxide, DMSO, has been studied. The data obtained have been analyzed according to a recently introduced solvation model that explicitly considers the presence of 1:1 organic solvent-water hydrogen-bonded species, S-W, in the bulk binary mixture and its exchange equilibria with (S) and (W) in the solvation shell of the probe. Calculations require reliable values of K-dissoc, the dissociation constant of S-W. Previously, this has been calculated from the dependence of the densities of binary solvent mixtures on their composition. Using iteration, the volume of the hydrogen-bonded species, VS-W, and K-dissoc were obtained simultaneously from the same set of experimental data. This approach may be potentially suspect because K-dissoc, and VS-W are highly correlated. Therefore, we extended a recently introduced approach for the calculation of Valcohol-W to binary mixtures of water with acetone, acetonitrile, N,N-dimethylformamide, DMSO, and pyridine. This approach includes: Determination of VS-W from ab initio calculations by the COSMO solvation model; correction of these volumes for the nonideal behavior of the binary solvent mixtures at different temperatures; use of corrected VS-W as a constant (not an adjustable parameter) in the equation that is employed to calculate K-dissoc (from density versus binary solvent composition). Solvation of RB and WB by Me2CO-W showed different behavior from that of aqueous DMSO. Thus, water is able to displace Me2CO more efficiently than DMSO from the probe solvation shell. Me2CO-W and DMSO-W displace their corresponding precursor solvents; this is more efficient for the former case because the strong DMSO-W interactions attenuate the solvation capacity of this species. Temperature increase resulted in desolvation of both probes, due to concomitant decrease of the structures of the component solvents.