Vibrational study of fluorobenzene and its solvation with methanol via polarized Raman measurements and quantum chemical calculations

Raman spectra of neat fluorobenzene (C₆H₅F, FB) and its binary mixtures with methanol (CH₃OH, M) at varying mole fractions of FB from 0.1 to 0.9 were recorded in order to understand the influence of intermolecular interaction on spectral features corresponding to some selected vibrational bands of FB in the region 1200-450 cm⁻¹. Only few vibrational bands of fluorobenzene show a significant change in their peak position in going from neat liquid to the complexes. The 803, 829 and 994 cm⁻¹ bands show blue shift upon complexation which indicates significant amount of charge transfer between the reference molecule and the solvent. However, the linewidths do not show any appreciable change. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed employing B3LYP method and high level basis set 6-311++G(d,p) to obtain the ground state geometry of neat FB and its hydrogen bonded complexes with methanol in gas phase. In order to account for the solvent effect and also to realize a condition quite close to the experiment, polarizable continuum model (PCM) calculations considering bulk solvation as well as explicit (specific plus bulk) solvation approaches were also performed. A detailed vibrational assignment of the various normal modes has been performed on the basis of potential energy distribution (PED) calculations. Depolarization ratios for the different vibrational bands were calculated and the values match nicely with the depolarization ratio determined from the experimental data.