Gold hydrogen bonds found to be as strong as other similar textbook interactions

‘Whether a metal can truly act as a genuine proton acceptor for a C–H donor has long remained an open and controversial question in chemistry,’ says Jun Chen at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter in China. Looking to answer this question Chen and colleagues conducted spectroscopic analysis of gold complexes and discovered that these species feature hydrogen bonds as strong as those formed by O–H and N–H groups. Understanding these interactions could allow chemists to design better catalysts or host–guest systems that rely on molecular recognition.