A density functional theory study of the molecular structure, reactivity, and spectroscopic properties of 2-(2-mercaptophenyl)-1-azaazulene tautomers and rotamers

Five stable tautomer and rotamers of the 2-(2-Mercaptophenyl)-1-azaazulene (thiol, thione, R1, R2, and R3) molecules were studied using density functional theory (DFT). The geometries of the studied tautomer and rotamers were fully optimized at the B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level. Thermodynamic calculations were performed at M06-2X/6-311G++(2d,2p) and ωB97XD/6-311G++(2d,2p) in the gas phase and ethanol solution conditions modeled by the solvation model based on density (SMD). The kinetic constant of tautomer and rotamers conversion was calculated in the temperature range 270–320 K using variational transition state theory (VTST) accompanied by one-dimensional wigner tunneling correction. Energy refinement at CCSD(T)/6–311++G(2d,2p) in the gas phase has been calculated. All the studied DFT methods qualitatively give similar tautomer stability orders in the gas phase. The ethanol solvent causes some reordering of the relative stability of 2-(2-Mercaptophenyl)-1-azaazulene conformers. The transition states for the 2-(2-Mercaptophenyl)-1-azaazulene tautomerization and rotamerization processes were also determined. The reactivity, electric dipole moment, and spectroscopic properties of the studied tautomer and rotamers were computed. The hyper-Rayleigh scattering (β(HRS)), and depolarization ratio (DR) exhibited promising optical properties when nonlinear optical properties were calculated.