Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Vol.103, No.7, 1161-1166, 1999
Hydrogen bonding in supercritical methanol. A molecular dynamics investigation
The molecular dynamics simulation technique was used to study the hydrogen-bonding structure of supercritical and liquid methanol in a wide range of temperature and pressure. The center of mass and the site-site pair distribution functions (PDFs) were obtained and their temperature and pressure dependence were investigated. Over the temperature and pressure range investigated here we find that the methanol molecules remain highly structured. Specifically, the behavior of the first peaks in O-O, H-H and H-O PDFs reveal the existence of hydrogen bonds in the system. The hydrogen bonds were estimated on the basis of a well-defined geometric criterion. We found that this criterion is in quantitative accordance with the energetic criterion of Jorgensen (Jorgensen, W. L. J. Phys. Chem. 1986, 90, 1276) concerning the estimation of hydrogen bonds in liquid methanol. The average number of hydrogen bonds per molecule n(HB) was obtained and compared with corresponding available data from NMR chemical shift measurements. The agreement between experiment and simulation was found to be excellent. The percentage distribution f(i) of liquid and supercritical methanol molecules, with i = 0,1,2,3,., hydrogen bonds per molecule, has been obtained and analyzed.