Hydrogen bonding in the protic ionic liquid triethylammonium nitrate explored by density functional tight binding simulations.

The applicability of the density functional based tight binding (DFTB) method to the description of hydrogen bond dynamics and infrared (IR) spectroscopy is addressed for the exemplary protic ionic liquid triethylammonium nitrate. Potential energy curves for proton transfer in gas and liquid phases are shown to be comparable to the high level coupled cluster theory in the thermally accessible range of bond lengths. Geometric correlations in the hydrogen bond dynamics are analyzed for a cluster of six ion pairs. Comparing DFTB and DFT data lends further support for the reliability of the DFTB method. Therefore, DFTB bulk simulations are performed to quantify the extent of geometric correlations in terms of Pauling's bond order model. Further, IR absorption spectra are obtained using DFTB and analyzed putting emphasis on the signatures of hydrogen bonding in the NH-stretching and far IR hydrogen bond range.