On the complex hydrogen-bond network structural dynamics of liquid methanol: Chains, rings, bifurcations, and lifetimes

Solvation plays a pivotal role in chemistry to effectively steer chemical reactions. While liquid water has been extensively studied, our molecular-level knowledge of other associated liquids capable of forming H-bond networks, such as liquid methanol, remains surprisingly scarce. We use large-scale ab initio molecular dynamics simulations to comprehensively study the structural, dynamical, and electronic properties of bulk methanol under ambient conditions. Methanol is an interesting species in the liquid state since it can only donate one H-bond while a significant fraction accepts two H-bonds, which imprints one-dimensional linear and cyclic H-bonding patterns subject to significant bifurcations. After validation of radial distribution functions and the self-diffusion coefficient with respect to experimental data, we carried out detailed analyses of the H-bond network topology in terms of chain-like, ring-like, and branched H-bonded aggregates, including lifetime assessment. The analysis revealed that nearly all methanol molecules are actively engaged in filamentary H-bonding, predominantly forming branched linear chains with a significant contribution arising from tetrameric to hexameric rings—in stark contrast to the compact three-dimensional H-bond network of water. Five-membered rings turned out to be the most long-lived cyclic structures with an intermittent lifetime of 4 ps, while rings consisting of only three methanol molecules as well as very large cyclic structures are merely transient motifs. Detailed analyses of the effective electric molecular dipoles disclose a pronounced sensitivity of non-additive polarization and charge transfer effects of the individual methanol molecules to the particular H-bond network structure they are a member of, including its topology, be it linear or cyclic.