Synthesis, crystal structure, Hirshfeld surface analysis and DFT calculations of 1,2-bis(1-phenylethylidene)hydrazine

The compound 1,2-bis(1-phenylethylidene)hydrazine was synthesized by refluxing acetophenone and hydrazine hydrate in the presence of ethanol. The 1,2-bis(1-phenylethylidene)hydrazine was characterized by various spectroscopic techniques and the 3D molecular structure was confirmed by single crystal X-ray diffraction experiment. The single crystal XRD studies show that the molecule crystallizes in the monoclinc crystal system with the space group P21/n. The intermolecular interactions in the crystal were visualized using Hirshfeld surface analysis. The interaction energies, 3D energy frameworks were computed to visualize the packing modes of the molecules. The density functional theory calculations were performed to optimize the structure using B3LYP/6–31 G(d,p) functional. The energy levels of the frontier molecular orbitals were studied to estimate the kinetic stability, and chemical reactivity of the molecule. MEP surface was generated to investigate the charge distribution over the molecule and to find possible chemical reactive sites in the molecule.