Probing Ion-Receptor Interactions in Halide Complexes of Octamethyl Calix[4]Pyrrole

The interplay of solvation and ion binding in anion host-guest complexes in solution governs the binding efficiency and selectivity of ion receptors. To gain molecular-level insight into the intrinsic binding properties of octamethyl calix[4]pyrrole (omC4P) host molecules with halide guest ions, we performed cryogenic ion vibrational spectroscopy (CIVS) of omC4P in complexes with fluoride, chloride, and bromide ions. We interpret the spectra using density functional theory, describing the infrared spectra of these complexes with both harmonic and anharmonic VPT2 calculations. The NH stretching modes of the pyrrole moieties serve as sensitive probes of the ion binding properties, as their frequencies encode the ion-receptor interactions. While scaled harmonic spectra reproduce the experimental NH stretching modes of the chloride and bromide complexes in broad strokes, the high proton affinity of fluoride introduces strong anharmonic effects. As a result, the spectrum of F−·omC4P is not even qualitatively captured by harmonic calculations, but it is recovered very well by VPT2 calculations. In addition, the VPT2 calculations recover the intricate coupling of the NH stretching modes with overtones and combination bands of CH stretching and NH bending modes and with low-frequency vibrations of the omC4P macrocycle, which are apparent for all halide ion complexes investigated here. A comparison of the CIVS spectra with infrared spectra of solutions of the same ion-receptor complexes shows how ion solvation changes the ion-receptor interactions for the different halide ions.