Double resonance spectroscopy of different conformers of the neurotransmitter amphetamine and its clusters with water

In this paper the conformational landscape of amphetamine in the neutral ground state is examined by both spectroscopy and theory. Several spectroscopic methods are used: laser-induced fluorescence (LIF), resonance-enhanced two-photon ionization (R2PI), dispersed fluorescence and IR/R2PI hole burning spectroscopy. The latter two methods provide for the first time vibrationally resolved spectra of the neutral ground state of dl-amphetamine and the amphetamine-(H2O)1,2 complexes. Nine stable conformers of the monomer were found by DFT (B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p)) and ab initio (MP2/6-311++G(d,p)) calculations. For conformer analysis the vibrations observed in the IR/R2PI hole burning and dispersed fluorescence spectra obtained from single vibronic levels (SVLF) of a selected conformer were compared with the results of an ab initio normal mode analysis. By this procedure three S0 → S1 transitions in the R2PI spectrum were assigned to three different conformer structures. Another weak transition earlier attributed to another conformer could be assigned to a vibronic band of one of the three conformers. Furthermore spectra of amphetamine-(H2O)1,2 are tentatively assigned.