Spectroscopic (FT-IR, FT-Raman and NMR) and computational studies on 3-methoxyaniline

• Molecular structure of 3-methoxyaniline and its conformers were investigated.
• Spectroscopic properties of molecule were examined by FT-IR, FT-Raman, and NMR techniques.
• The complete vibrational assignments are performed on the basis of the total energy distribution (TED).
• Nonlinear optical properties and Natural bond orbital analysis were investigated.

In this work, the molecular structure, vibrational, UV and NMR spectra of 3-methoxyaniline (abbreviated as 3MOA, C7H9NO) were studied. The FT-IR and FT-Raman spectra were recorded. The ground-state molecular geometry and vibrational frequencies were calculated by using the Hartree–Fock (HF) and density functional theory (DFT)/B3LYP methods and 6-311++G(d, p) as a basis set. The fundamental vibrations were assigned on the basis of the total energy distribution (TED) of the vibrational modes, calculated with scaled quantum mechanics (SQM) method and PQS program. Comparison of the observed fundamental vibrational frequencies of 3MOA with calculated results by HF and DFT methods indicates that B3LYP is superior to HF method for molecular vibrational problems. The difference between the observed and scaled wavenumber values is very small. The theoretically predicted FT-IR and FT-Raman spectra of the title molecule have been constructed. A study on the Mulliken atomic charges, the electronic properties were performed by time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) approach, Frontier molecular orbitals (FMO), molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) and thermodynamic properties were performed and compared with methoxybenzene and aniline. The electric dipole moment (μ) and the first hyperpolarizability (β) values of the investigated molecule were computed using ab initio quantum mechanical calculations. The calculated results also show that the 3MOA molecule might have microscopic nonlinear optical (NLO) behavior with non-zero values. The 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) chemical shifts of the molecule were calculated by the gauge independent atomic orbital (GIAO) method and compared with experimental results.