Spectrochimica Acta Part A 79 (2011) 1024–1033 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy jou rn al hom epa ge: www.elsevier.com/locate/saa Experimental and theoretical studies on the identification of p-biphenyloxycarbonylphenyl acrylate Sedat Cetin a , Gürcan Yildirim b , Cihan Parlak b,∗ , Mustafa Akdogan b , Cabir Terzioglu b a Abant Izzet Baysal University, Department of Chemistry, Bolu 14280, Turkey b Abant Izzet Baysal University, Department of Physics, Bolu 14280, Turkey a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 6 March 2011 Received in revised form 28 March 2011 Accepted 10 April 2011 Keywords: p-Biphenyloxycarbonylphenyl acrylate IR and NMR spectroscopies B3LYP HF FMO MEP a b s t r a c t This study presents the identification of a title compound, p-biphenyloxycarbonylphenyl acrylate by means of experimental and theoretical evidences. The spectroscopic properties of the compound were experimentally investigated by Fourier transformation-infrared spectra (in the region 400–4000 cm -1 ) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) chemical shifts (with a frequency of 400 MHz). Moreover, the opti- mized molecular structures, vibrational frequencies including infrared intensities and Raman activities, corresponding vibrational spectra interpreted with the aid of normal coordinate analysis based on scaled density functional force field, thermodynamic properties, atomic charges and ultraviolet–visible (UV–vis) spectra were analyzed utilizing ab initio Hartree–Fock (HF) and Density Functional Theory (B3LYP) meth- ods at 6-31G(d,p) calculation level. It was found that the vibrational frequencies and chemical shifts obtained were shown to have a good agreement with available experimental results. We not only sim- ulated frontier molecular orbitals (FMO) and molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) but also evaluated the transition state and energy band gap clearly. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The studies on side-chain liquid crystalline polymers (SCLCPs) increase day by day owing to the fact that the increased interest in application in technology and industry of these polymers in the last years stems from its remarkable optic, opto-electronic and thermo conducting properties [1–6]. p-Biphenyloxycarbonylphenyl acry- late, the polymer of which was reported to exhibit liquid crystalline behavior, can be used in optic and opto-electronic technology. Therefore, it is important to analyze the characterization of p- biphenyloxycarbonylphenyl acrylate for future studies. Moreover, the scientists use computational methods which are reliable to characterize the molecule because of their efficiency and accu- racy with respect to the evaluation of a number of molecular properties [7]. A suitable quantum chemical study is helpful to predict compound properties economically and to clarify some experiment phenomena insightfully [8]. Hence theoretical studies are either reliable or useful to identify the molecule. In this respect, the computational researches on compound properties tend to increase [9–11]. In this study, we calculated the molecular structures using B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) and HF/6-31G(d,p) basis sets and determined ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 374 254 10 00/2749; fax: +90 374 253 46 42; mobile: +90 530 252 9968. E-mail address: parlak c@ibu.edu.tr (C. Parlak). the correlation coefficient between them. Furthermore, the vibra- tional frequencies and chemical shifts (only proton) were observed and compared with theoretical predictions. The results show that the calculations were found to be in good agreement with experi- mental evidences. Comparison of theoretical and experimental data exhibit well correlation confirming the reliability of the methods employed in this work. In addition; after the frontier orbitals and molecular electrostatic potential were visualized, transition states and energy band gaps were determined and interpreted. Ther- modynamic properties, PED analysis, UV–vis spectra and atomic charges were also mentioned for the molecule. The aim of this study is to not only investigate the agreement between theoretical data and experimental results but also clarify the characterization of p- biphenyloxycarbonylphenyl acrylate and show the way to future studies of this molecule. 2. Experimental details P-biphenyloxycarbonylphenyl acrylate was synthesized as was reported previously [12]. Infrared spectra were recorded on a Shimadzu 8400S FT-IR spectrophotometer in the region 400–4000 cm -1 with a resolution of 4 cm -1 in the transmission mode. The sample was compressed into self-supporting pellet and introduced into an IR cell equipped with KBr window. Moreover, 1 H spectra were recorded at 400 MHz with a Bruker-Spectrospin Avance DPX 400 instrument. 1386-1425/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.saa.2011.04.015