Solid-State ¹⁷O NMR of Pharmaceutical Compounds: Salicylic Acid and Aspirin

Abstract

We report solid-state NMR characterization of the (17)O quadrupole coupling (QC) and chemical shift (CS) tensors in five site-specifically (17)O-labeled samples of salicylic acid and o-acetylsalicylic acid (Aspirin). High-quality (17)O NMR spectra were obtained for these important pharmaceutical compounds under both static and magic angle spinning (MAS) conditions at two magnetic fields, 14.0 and 21.1 T. A total of 14 (17)O QC and CS tensors were experimentally determined for the seven oxygen sites in salicylic acid and Aspirin. Although both salicylic acid and Aspirin form hydrogen bonded cyclic dimers in the solid state, we found that the potential curves for the concerted double proton transfer in these two compounds are significantly different. In particular, while the double-well potential curve in Aspirin is nearly symmetrical, it is highly asymmetrical in salicylic acid. This difference results in quite different temperature dependencies in (17)O MAS spectra of the two compounds. A careful analysis of variable-temperature (17)O MAS NMR spectra of Aspirin allowed us to obtain the energy asymmetry (ΔE) of the double-well potential, ΔE = 3.0 ± 0.5 kJ/mol. We were also able to determine a lower limit of ΔE for salicylic acid, ΔE > 10 kJ/mol. These asymmetrical features in potential energy curves were confirmed by plane-wave DFT computations, which yielded ΔE = 3.7 and 17.8 kJ/mol for Aspirin and salicylic acid, respectively. To complement the solid-state (17)O NMR data, we also obtained solid-state (1)H and (13)C NMR spectra for salicylic acid and Aspirin. Using experimental NMR parameters obtained for all magnetic nuclei present in salicylic acid and Aspirin, we found that plane-wave DFT computations can produce highly accurate NMR parameters in well-defined crystalline organic compounds.