Fourteen conformers of 3-amino-1-propanol as the minima on the potential energy surface are examined at the MP2/6-311++G** level. Their relative energies calculated at B3LYP, MP3 and MP4 levels of theory indicated that two most stable conformers display the intramolecular OH - N hydrogen bonds. The vertical ionization energies of these conformers calculated with ab initio electron propagator theory in the P3/aug-cc-pVTZ approximation are in agreement with experimental data from photoelectron spectroscopy. Natural bond orbital analyses were used to explain the differences of IEs of the highest occupied molecular ortibal of conformers. Combined with statistical mechanics principles, conformational distributions at various temperatures are obtained and the temperature dependence of photoelectron spectra is interpreted.
The conformers of allyl alcohol and allyl mercaptan were studied with B3LYP/aug-cc-pVTZ method. Their relative energies were calculated at MP3, MP4(SDQ), and CCSD(T) levels. The most stable conformers for these two molecules are Gauche-gauche' (Gg'). The theo-retical photoelectron spectra simulated with the calculated ionization energies demonstrate that there are at least four conformers in allyl alcohol and four conformers in allyl mercaptan in the gas-phase experiments. The Dyson orbitals of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and the next HOMO (HOMO-1) of allyl mercaptan Ggt conformer show strongly mixing ns and πc=c characteristics, which may be due to the resonance and inductive effects between πc=c and ns in HOMO-1 and HOMO.