Force fields and assignments of the vibrational spectra of acridine and phenazine—an ab initio study

A complete set of force constants and their corresponding scale factors in non-redundant local coordinates were obtained by fitting the in-plane ab initio Hartree–Fock (HF) vibrational frequencies computed using 4-21G and 6-31G^** basis sets to the experimental ones. Using these force constants the potential energy distribution (PED) of the normal modes was obtained and based on the PED the earlier empirical assignments were either confirmed or reassigned for all the in-plane fundamentals. The force constants of acridine and phenazine are compared to those of anthracene to study the similarities and differences. Probable assignment is proposed for the out-of-plane fundamentals of acridine based on Durig's simple scaling of the local force constants.