Spectroscopic studies of the hydrogen bond

Abstract

Since the publication of the proceedings of the Ljubljana symposium on hydrogen bonding by Hadzi [1] and the excellent book on the hydrogen bond by Pimentel and McClellan [2], a very large number of publications on the spectroscopic studies of hydrogen bonding have appeared in the literature. The present authors prepared a review on hydrogen bonding covering the period 1958-1963 for limited circulation [3]. In view of the very enthusiastic reception for this review by a number of workers and also the vast amount of published information on the subject after 1963, it was considered valuable to present an up-to-date review on the subject. The present review covers the period from 1958 to 1967 and embodies most of the studies on the hydrogen bond employing spectroscopic methods. The review does not include studies on crystals and macromolecules; hydrogen bonding in crystals has been recently reviewed by Hamilton and Ibers [4]. Electronic theories of the hydrogen bond have been reviewed by Bratoz [5]. Even though we have attempted to write a comprehensive review to include most of the published work on spectroscopic studies, it is possible that we have missed some of the papers in this field; we apologize for such oversights and omissions which become unavoidable in such an undertaking.