Trimethyl phosphate (TMP) and water were co-deposited
in nitrogen and argon matrices, and adducts of
these species were identified using infrared spectroscopy.
Formation of the adducts was evidenced by shifts
in the vibrational frequencies of TMP and water. We computed the
structures of these adducts and the
vibrational frequencies at the HF/6-31G** level. The computed
vibrational frequencies in the adducts involving
the TMP submolecule compared well with the observed frequencies, while
the agreement was rather poor for
the modes involving the H2O submolecule. Both
experimental and computational studies indicated that two
types of TMP−water complexes were formed: one in which the hydrogen
in water was bonded to the
phosphoryl oxygen of TMP and another in which the bonding was at the
alkoxy oxygen of the phosphate.
The stabilization energy of these adducts, corrected for
zero-point energies and basis set superposition errors,
was computed at both the HF/6-31G**//HF/6-31G** and
MP2/6-31G**//HF/6-31G** levels. Our computations
indicated that both the phosphoryl and alkoxy oxygen bonded
TMP−H2O complexes had a cyclic structure
determined by a combination of two hydrogen-bonded interactions, one
involving a hydrogen in water and
another involving a hydrogen in the methyl group of TMP.