Crystal Structure, Hirshfeld Surface and Frontier Molecular Orbital Analyses of N-[2-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]succinamic Acid

Abstract

The ortho-CF3 substituent and the N-H bond are in syn-conformation in N-[2-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl]succinamic acid. In amide and acid functionalities, the carbonyl groups are directed in opposite directions to each other and their related-CH2 groups. syn-Conformation is observed for the acid functionality, where the carbonyl C=O and hydroxyl O-H bonds are directed in the same direction. Three planar fragments comprise of the molecule: aromatic ring (A), core portion -Carm-N(H)-C(=O)-C(H2)-C(H2)(B) and -C(H2)-C(=O)-OH(C). The dihedral angle between a pair of fragments being 48.6(4)º (A and B), 81.6 (4)º (B and C) and 70.5 (5)º (A and C). N-H•••O hydrogen bonds bind the molecules forming C(4) chains in the crystal, and the neighbouring anti-parallel chains are bound by O-H•••O hydrogen bonds resulting in a chair shaped ribbon of one-dimensional nature. The Hirshfeld surface study was carried out, including fingerprint plots. Studies have shown that the interactions with O•••H/H•••O (27.4%), H•••H (27.3%) and H•••F/F•••H (20.2%) substantially added to the surface. Theoretically, the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) and various global reactivity descriptors were also computed by the density functional theory (DFT/B3LYP) approach with a 6-311G(d, p) basis set in the ground state on the geometrically optimized structure in the gas phase.