Van der Waals interactions regulating the hydration of 2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine, the constructing monomer of biocompatible polymers.

Van der Waals (VDW) interactions provide fantastic properties for biological systems that function at room temperature. The VDW interaction, which primarily contributes to weak hydrogen bonding, is expected to play a key role in regulating hydrophobic hydration to express the biologically inert biocompatible function of polymerized MPCs (2-methacryloyloxyethyl phosphorylcholine). This report explores at the molecular level the biologically inert function of polymerized MPCs through an array of vibrational spectroscopic and computational characterization of MPC monomers, as temperature-dependent change of intramolecular weak hydrogen bonding. Synchrotron Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy and terahertz time-domain spectroscopy were used to investigate temperature-dependent spectral changes in the low frequency vibrations of the MPC over the temperature range from cryogenic to room temperature, and the results were analysed by highly reliable well-established density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Complicated spectral features in the low frequency energy region and the uncertain conformations of the MPC in the amorphous powder state are clearly resolved under a polarizable continuum model and dispersion correction to pure DFT calculations.