Quinone-hydroquinone complexes as model components of humic acids: Theoretical studies of their structure, stability and Visible-UV spectra

Humic substances present a geochernically and environmentally important, yet poorly characterized, component of dissolved organic matter. In the past they have generally been described as macromolecular polymers containing many different functional groups. Recently, it has been suggested, partly on the basis of new experimental data, that such materials are rather supramolecular in nature, consisting of smaller molecular units held together by noncovalent forces such as van der Waals forces and H-bonds. A perplexing difficulty in characterizing humic acids has always been that data expected to be informative, such as their Visible-UV spectra, were sadly lacking in structure. This has usually been explained using models in which ensembles of molecules are present characterized by either long-range charge-charge interactions or random short-range donor-acceptor interactions. Structural components resembling hydroquinone:qui none donor-acceptor complexes have been postulated to explain the near-IR and visible spectra of humic acids (Del Vecchio R., and Blough N.V. (2004) On the origin of the optical properties of humic substances. Environ. Sci. 38, 3885-3891). We have calculated structures, energetics and Visible-UV spectra for several different quinone and hydroquinone monomers and for donor-acceptor complexes formed between hydroquinone, H(2)Q, the donor, and quinone, Q, the acceptor. Most of the Visible-UV spectral calculations are carried out using time-dependent density functional theory. For the monomers the calculated energies are in good agreement with experiment. We confirm that the absorption spectra of the D:A complexes have maxima at much lower energy than their monomeric components. These absorption energies are influenced by substituents on the aromatic rings, but are also sensitive functions of the distances between the aromatic rings. The importance of D:A complexes in generating, a spectrum like that of natural humic acids is consistent with the model of Del Vecchio and Blough (2004). However, our calculations of reaction free energies indicate that the donor-acceptor interactions do not arise from free D:A complexes, but rather from forced or random close approach of D and A rings. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.