Re. Riter et al., FORMAMIDE IN REVERSE MICELLES - RESTRICTED ENVIRONMENT EFFECTS ON MOLECULAR-MOTION, JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY B, 102(41), 1998, pp. 7931-7938
Novel Aerosol OT (AOT) reverse micelles solubilizing formamide rather
than water have been created and studied. In contrast to water sequest
ered in the interior of AOT reverse micelles, the vibrational spectra
indicate that the intramicellar formamide retains a large degree of hy
drogen bonding character and its structure appears significantly less
perturbed by the restricted environment than water. However, solvation
dynamics measurements show that the intramicellar formamide is nearly
completely immobilized, a dramatic departure from bulk solvation dyna
mics. These results show that structural aspects derived from the char
acteristic vibrational motion does not necessarily provide insight int
o other dynamical solvent behavior.