Crystal structure and Hirshfeld analysis of 3'-bromo-4-methyl-chalcone and 3'-cyano-4-methyl-chalcone

Acta Crystallogr E Crystallogr Commun. 2020 Aug 25;76(Pt 9):1496-1502. doi: 10.1107/S2056989020011135. eCollection 2020 Sep 1.

Abstract

Two crystal structures of chalcones, or 1,3-di-aryl-prop-2-en-1-ones, are presented; both contain a methyl substitution on the 3-Ring, but differ on the 1-Ring, bromo versus cyano. The compounds are 3'-bromo-4-methyl-chalcone [systematic name: 1-(2-bromo-phen-yl)-3-(4-methyl-phen-yl)prop-2-en-1-one], C16H13BrO, and 3'-cyano-4-methyl-chalcone {systematic name: 2-[3-(4-methyl-phen-yl)prop-2-eno-yl]benzo-nitrile}, C17H13NO. Both chalcones meaningfully add to the large dataset of chalcone structures. The crystal structure of 3'-cyano-4-methyl-chalcone exhibits close contacts with the cyano nitro-gen that do not appear in previously reported disubstituted cyano-chalcones, namely inter-actions between the cyano nitro-gen atom and a ring hydrogen atom as well as a methyl hydrogen atom. The structure of 3'-bromo-4-methyl-chalcone exhibits a type I halogen bond, similar to that found in a previously reported structure for 4-bromo-3'-methyl-chalcone.

Keywords: bromo; chalcone; crystal structure; cyano; edge-to-face; halogen bond; π stacking.

Grants and funding

This work was funded by EPSRC (grant No. EP/L015544/1 to C. L. Hall; grant No. EP/L016648/1 to V. Hamilton); European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant No. 736899) grant . Funding for the Bruker Photon II D8 Venture diffractometer was provided by NSF-MRI #1827313 grant .