Conformational analysis of acetamide in the ground and lowest excited electronic states

Abstract

For acetamide molecule (CH3CONH2) in the ground (S0) and lowest excited singlet (S1) and triplet (T1) electronic states calculations of equilibrium geometry parameters, harmonic vibrational frequencies and barriers to conformational transitions (also conformer energy differences in excited states) using following ab initio methods: MP2, CCSD(T), CASSCF, CASPT2 and MRCI were performed. One-, two- and three-dimensional potential energy surface (PES) sections by different large amplitude motions (LAM) coordinates were calculated by means of MP2/aug-cc-pVTZ (S0) and CASPT2/cc-pVTZ (S1, T1). As a result of electronic excitation, both CCON and CNH2 fragments become pyramidal. On 2D PES sections by torsion (CN) and inversion coordinates there are six minima forming three pairs of enantiomers. Using PES sections different anharmonic vibrational problems were solved and the frequencies of large amplitude vibrations were estimated.