Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals Science and Technology. Section A. Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals, Vol.271, 55-66, 1995
Pi-Spin Density Determination of Phenylnitronyl Nitroxide Radical - A Liquid-Phase ENDOR/Triple Study
The molecular building block of the first well-characterized purely organic crystalline ferromagnet is 4,4,5,5-tetramethyl-3-oxide-2(p-nitrophenyl)-2-imidazolin-1-yloxy doubler radical. Among the diverse subjects of organic molecular crystalline ferromagnetism, the spin density distribution of the molecular building unit gives fundamental bases for understanding the underlying mechanism. In this work, an attempt has been made to determine experimentally the magnitudes and relative signs of the pi-spin densities on the aromatic ring carbon sites (except the site 1) of 4,4,5,5-tetramethyl-3-oxide-2-phenyl-2-imidazolin- 1-yloxyl doublet radical (abbreviated to 2-phenylnitronyl nitroxide) by liquid-phase ENDOR/TRIPLE spectroscopy. A series of partially deuterated 2-phenylnitronyl nitroxide compounds have given an unequivocal experimental identification of the ring protons : the spin densities of the ortho (2’,6’), meta (3’,5’), and para (4’) proton are rho(ortho)= - 0.023, rho(meta)= +0.013, and rho(para), -0.0207, respectively, and Sigma(i) rho(i)= -0.0407. The results show that 2-phenylnitronyl nitroxide undergoes negative spin polarization in the phenyl ring because the negative spins exceed the positive ones. The results have been compared with those obtained from polarized neutron diffraction measurements on the single crystal of 2-(p-nitrophenyl)-nitronyl nitroxide by Schweizer et al. The INDO calculation has been tested, indicating that the calculation gives an overestimation a great deal for the hyperfine coupling constants of the aromatic protons.