Crystal structure, spectral characterization, molecular modeling studies and structural effects of the proton transfer process for (E)-5-methoxy-2-[(3,4-dimethylphenylimino) methyl]phenol

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to characterize a new organic material, (E)-5-methoxy-2-[(3,4-dimethylphenylimino)methyl]phenol, which was synthesized and grown as a single crystal. The molecular structure and spectroscopic properties of the ortho-hydroxy Schiff base compound were determined by X-ray diffraction analysis, Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR), ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy techniques, experimentally and computationally with density functional theory (DFT) calculations. X-ray and UV-Vis studies show that the compound exists in an OH tautomeric form in the solid and solvent media. The gas phase geome-try optimizations of two possible forms of the title compound, resulting from the prototropic tautomerism, were ob-tained using DFT calculations at the B3LYP/6-311G+(d,p) level of theory. A relaxed potential energy surface (PES) scan was performed based on the optimized geometry of the OH tautomeric form by varying the redundant internal co-ordinate, the O-H bond distance. According to the PES scan process, the molecular geometry is strongly affected by the intramolecular proton transfer. The calculated first hyperpolarizability indicates that the compound could be a good material for non-linear optical applications.