Concerted and asynchronous mechanism of ground state proton transfer in alcohol mediated 7-hydroxyquinoline

•Reaction rate constants obtained by DFT agree with experimental ones quite well.•Experimental postulate of concerted and asynchronous GSPT was confirmed.•The GSPT reaction can be decomposed into three asynchronous steps.

Alcohols mediated 7-hydroxyquinoline (7-HQ) complex has received enormous attractions on the issue of proton transfer reaction in the ground and excited states. In the present paper, concentrating on the ground state proton transfer (GSPT), density functional theory (DFT) calculations were carried out to investigate the intrinsic insight into the reaction mechanism. We found that the GSPT is concerted and asynchronous process and can be accelerated by more acidic alcohol. Such GSPT was initiated by the proton transfer from alcohol to keto group of 7-HQ and finished by the proton transfer from nitrogen to alcohol. Our findings were in agreement with experimental conclusions quite well. Our results would be helpful to understand the proton transfer reaction for 7-HQ and related systems.

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