The competition between the intramolecular hydrogen bond and π‐electron delocalization in trifluoroacetylacetone—A theoretical study

Conformational study of trifluoroacetylacetone was carried out using the HF, B3LYP, and MP2 methods with the 6‐31G(d, p) and 6‐311++G(d, p) basis sets. All of the results show that the chelated enol structures (E11 and E31) have extra stability with respect to the other forms and one of them (E11) is global minimum. The energy gap between the chelated forms is in the range 0.7–5.9 kJ mol^?1. Theoretical calculations show that this compound has an asymmetric double minimum potential energy surface which is in contrast with the electron diffraction result. Moreover, the computational results predict that due to the withdrawing effect of CF₃ group, hydrogen bond in trifluoroacetylacetone is weaker than the acetylacetone. Because of the more stability of E11, it is expected that the hydrogen bond energy in E11 is greater than the E31, but at all of the computational levels with most extended basis set the converse results were observed. These results clearly show that the hydrogen bond is not a superior parameter in conformational preference and the contribution of resonance is probably greater than the hydrogen bond. Finally, the analysis of this system by quantum theory of atoms in molecules and natural bond orbital methods fairly support the ab initio results. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2010