Vibrational spectra and fundamental structural assignments from HF and DFT calculations of methyl benzoate

The Fourier transform Raman and Fourier transform infrared spectra of methyl benzoate (MB) were recorded in the liquid phase. The equilibrium geometry, harmonic vibrational frequencies, infrared intensities and Raman scattering activities, depolarization ratios, reduced masses were calculated by Hartree-Fock (HF) and density functional B3LYP method with the 6-311+G(d,p) basis set. The scaled theoretical wavenumbers showed very good agreement with the experimental values. The thermodynamic functions of the title compound were also performed at HF/6-311+G(d,p) and B3LYP/6-311+G(d,p) levels of theory. A detailed interpretations of the infrared and Raman spectra of methyl benzoate is reported. The theoretical spectrograms for FT-IR spectra of the title molecule have been constructed. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.