2‐Amino derivatives of 5‐nitro­phenyl­acet­amide

The structures of the potential non‐linear optical (NLO) materials N‐2‐(iso­propyl­amino)‐5‐nitro­phenyl]­acet­amide, (I) C₁₁H₁₅N₃O₃, and N‐2‐(butyl­amino)‐5‐nitro­phenyl]­acet­amide, (II) C₁₂H₁₇N₃O₃, have been investigated by X‐ray analysis. To compare them with the structure of N‐2‐(di­methyl­amino)‐5‐nitro­phenyl]­acet­amide, (III) C₁₀H₁₃N₃O₃, a known NLO compound, we had to redetermine the structure of (III), since it was described only briefly in the literature. There are two mol­ecules in the asymmetric unit of compound (I), which have different orientations of the substituents with respect to the benzene ring. The packing of mol­ecules in (II) and (III) contains stacks but both (I) and (II) crystallize in a centrosymmetric space group, which renders them inappropriate for NLO applications.