Synthesis and structure of new 1-cyanoacetyl-4-arylsemicarbazide derivatives with potential anticancer activity

•The structures of the compounds experimental and computed 1H, 13C NMR, IR and Raman spectra.•HOMO and LUMO orbitals, electrostatic potential maps and non-covalent interaction maps for most stable tautomers.•PED analysis and non-covalent interaction maps.

The aim of this work are experimental and computational structural studies of new derivatives of 1-cyanoacetyl-4-arylsemicarbazide with potential anticancer activity. We considered 10 possible tautomeric forms and ranked them according to their energy of stabilization using quantum chemical calculations with the single point B3LYP DFT method and the basis set 6-311++G(3df, 3pd) of Gaussian09 program. The order of tautomers was identical for all considered compounds with the exception of derivatives 1, 5 and 10. Furthermore, we computed HOMO and LUMO orbitals, electrostatic potential maps and non-covalent interaction maps for most stable tautomers. We confirmed the structures of the compounds with application of experimental and computed 1H, 13C NMR, IR and Raman spectra. In addition we performed PED analysis in order to assign IR vibrations and computed non-covalent interaction maps.