Ab initio study of vibrational spectra of p-tert-butylcalix[4]aryl ester complexed with alkali metal cation

Abstract

Theoretical infrared(IR) absorption spectra were calculated for the ethyl ester of p-tert-butylcalix[4]arene (1) in the cone conformer and its alkali-metal-ion complex. The vibrational spectra were obtained by restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF) calculations with the 6-31G basis set. The characteristic vibrational frequencies of various C-O and C=O stretching motions of the complexes show that the structure of 1+K+ complex is almost of C4v symmetry compared to 1+Na+ (C2v) analogue. The theoretical results for the host molecule 1 and complex (1+Na+) were compared with the experimental results, and the calculated vibrational frequencies agree well with the features of the experimental spectra.