Theoretical investigation on the geometric, spectroscopic, nonlinear optical parameter, and frontier molecular orbital of 1,3-bis(4-methoxyphenyl)prop-2-en-1-one by DFT/ab initio calculations

Abstract

Quantum chemical calculations of energies, geometries, and vibrational wavenumbers of 1,3-bis(4-methoxyphenyl)prop-2-en-1-one (C17H16O3) in the ground state were carried out by the using ab initio Hartree−Fock and density functional theory (DFT/B3LYP) methods with the 6-311++G** basis set. The difference between the observed and scaled wavenumber values of most of the fundamentals is very small. Theoretical vibrational spectra of the title compound were interpreted by means of potential energies distributions. The theoretical spectrograms for IR spectra of the title compound have been constructed. The analysis of natural bond orbitals shows that the intramolecular hyperconjugative interactions are formed by the orbital overlap between π*(C–C) and π(C–C) bond orbitals, which results in intramolecular charge transfer causing stabilization of the system. The predicted nonlinear optical properties of the title compound are much larger than those of urea. In addition, the analysis of frontier molecular orbitals shows that the title compound has good stability and high chemical hardness.