Temperature-Dependent Blue Shifting of O–H Stretching Frequencies in Crystalline Cellulose Explained

Increasing the temperature of a chemical system generally causes covalent bonds to lengthen and weaken, often the first step in initiating chemical reactions. However, for some hydrogen-bonded systems, infrared (IR) spectroscopy measurements reveal that covalent O–H bonds actually strengthen and therefore shorten when heated. In 1957, Finch and Lippincott proposed a simple one-dimensional (1D) model to explain this effect, in which thermal excitation of intermolecular stretching modes leads to lengthening and weakening of intermolecular O–H···O hydrogen bonds, thereby indirectly strengthening the associated covalent O–H bonds. Taking cellulose (an infinitely repeating polymer of d-glucose) as an example, we use molecular dynamics modeling to show that the same mechanism is responsible for temperature-dependent blue shifting of O–H stretching bands in IR spectra of carbohydrate biopolymers, except that interchain hydrogen bonds are weakened by thermal excitation of chain-separation modes, while intrachain hydrogen bonds are weakened by thermally induced changes in ring puckering and orientation of ring substituents but not reorientation of glucose units relative to one another or overall twisting of the cellulose chains.