THEORETICAL VIBRATIONAL SPECTRA STUDIES: THE EFFECT OF RING SIZE ON THE CARBONYL VIBRATIONAL FREQUENCIES

In this paper, molecular structures and vibrational frequencies of cycloketone, cyclopropanone, cyclobutanone, cyclopentanone, and cyclohexanone have been investigated by density functional theory (DFT) and the second order Møller and Plesset (MP2) levels of theory, using 6-311G, 6-311G**, 6-311++G, and 6-311++G** basis sets. The calculations predict a planar structure for cyclopropanone. The cyclobutanone ring is puckered and according to the calculations at B3LYP/6-311++G** and MP2/6-311++G** levels of theory, it deviates from planarity by 5.0° and 15.7°, respectively. The calculated barrier height between puckered and planar conformer, at MP2/6-311G** level of theory, is 196.7 cm-1. The puckering frequency at B3LYP/6-311G** and MP2/6-311G** levels are 47.5 cm-1 and 121.2 cm-1. Cyclopentanone has twisted conformations ( C 2 symmetry) in which carbons C1 and C2 are out-of-plane with a torsional angle of 11.5° (MP2/6-311G**) and the molecule goes from one conformation to the other via an envelope transition conformation ( C s symmetry). or planar hilltop conformation ( C 2v symmetry). The most stable conformation of the cyclohexanone is C s chair, which has no ring strain, is used as land mark.

The conformational properties of some phenyl esters. Molecular orbital and nuclear magnetic resonance studies

Extensive, geometry-optimized, STO-3G MO computations on phenyl formate imply a strongly nonplanar Z conformer (C=O bond cis to the phenyl group) at ambient temperatures. The internal barrier to rotation about the C(1)—O bond in this conformer is computed as V/kJ mol−1 = (−5.17 ± 0.27) sin2 θ − (2.42 ± 0.27) sin2 2θ, θ being zero for the planar conformer; the twofold is nearly twice as large as the fourfold component. The expectation value of θ is 58° at 300 K. The spin–spin coupling constants over six bonds between 13C and I9F nuclei in 4-fluorophenyl formate, acetate, propionate, and isobutyrate, as well as in the 2,6-dichloro-4-fluorophenyl acetate, are adduced as evidence for nonplanar conformers of these molecules. The magnitudes of these six-bond coupling constants are consistent with internal barriers to rotation about the C(1)—O bonds, which are similar in magnitude to those given by the computations on the Z conformer of phenyl formate. The energies of the planar and nonplanar E conformers, as well as the interconversion energies for [Formula: see text] isomerization, are computed. Small amounts of the nonplanar E conformer are predicted at ambient temperatures. The 13C chemical shifts and the one-bond 13C, 19F coupling constants are consistent, respectively, with only minor variations in the conformational behavior of the ester moieties caused by the fluorine substituent and by changes in the structures of these moieties themselves.