Rotational barriers in azobenzene and azonaphthalene.

Theoretical predictions of rotational barriers for pi-conjugated substituents of aromatic rings sometimes significantly overestimate the corresponding experimental values. In this work, the rotational barriers in benzaldehyde, azobenzene, and azonaphthalene are studied by DFT calculations employing a variety of exchange-correlation functionals and basis sets. The results for benzaldehyde and azobenzene agree with previously published theoretical values. For azonaphthalene, 10 unique minima and corresponding rotational barriers have been found. The ability to distinguish minima connected by rotational barriers opens an opportunity for a detailed experimental study of rotational barrier heights in substituted aromatics.

Vibrational spectra of furan, pyrrole, and thiophene from a density functional theory anharmonic force field.

Quartic force fields for furan, pyrrole, and thiophene have been generated using density functional theory (DFT). These were used to evaluate vibrational levels by second-order perturbation theory (PT) and also by the variational method. The results for the fundamental frequencies are in very good agreement with observation. The accuracy of overtones and combination transitions is also good, for those cases where assignments can be made. Second-order PT combines speed and quality whereas the variational approach is inherently more reliable, but converges rather slowly, requiring significant computational effort.