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Science 18 December 1987:
Vol. 238. no. 4834, pp. 1670 - 1674
DOI: 10.1126/science.238.4834.1670
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Articles

Does Ammonia Hydrogen Bond?

DAVID D. NELSON JR. 1, GERALD T. FRASER 2, and WILLIAM KLEMPERER 3

1 National Research Council postdoctoral research associate at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309.
2 Research scientist in the Molecular Spectroscopy Division of the National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD 20899.
3 Professor of chemistry at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Spectroscopic characterizations of the stereochemistry of complexes of ammonia (NH3) have strongly confirmed some long-held ideas about the weak interactions of NH3 while casting doubt on others. As expected, NH3 is observed to be a nearly universal proton acceptor, accepting hydrogen bonds from even some of the weakest proton donors. Surprisingly, no evidence has been found to support the view that NH3 acts as a proton donor through hydrogen bonding. A critical evaluation of the work that has been done to gather such evidence, as well as of earlier work involving condensed-phase observations, suggests that NH3 might well be best described as a powerful hydrogen-bond acceptor with little propensity to donate hydrogen bonds.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Molecular Interactions and Hydrogen Bond Tunneling Dynamics: Some New Perspectives.
R. J. Saykally and G. A. Blake (1993)
Science 259, 1570-1575
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