Investigation of the electronic structure and the structural stability of selected penicillins by density functional calculations of 14N nuclear quadrupole resonance parameters

A computational study was carried out by density functional theory (DFT) to investigate the relative stability and reactivity in three selected penicillins: penicillin-G, penicillin-V and carbenicillin. The geometry of the investigated molecules was optimized at the B3LYP/6-31G(d) level of theory. Then, the nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) parameters of 14N and 2H nuclei and natural bond orbital (NBO) analysis in these molecules were calculated on the geometrically optimized models at the B3LYP level using 6-311++G(d,p) basis sets in the gas phase. The NBO analysis shows that the occupancy of the LP(N) decreases with increasing p character of the lone pair of nitrogen. A comparison between the results obtained for these penicillins and related 6-APA structures of them indicates that the presence of a bulky side group in the acyl side chain can lead to more stability of the β-lactam ring. On the other hand, NBO analysis was applied to rationalize the 14N NQR parameters in the charge distribution around nitrogen atoms. Inspection of the present results illustrates that the largest component of EFG tensor (q zz ), the nuclear quadrupole coupling constant, C Q, and the NQR frequency values of nitrogens decrease with decreasing occupancy values of LP(N). We suggest that the reason for this trend can be found in increasing contribution of delocalized electrons of nitrogen in the intramolecular interactions and hence stability of these structures increases in the order: PG < PV < CA. Finally, a good relationship is found between most of the calculated 2H NQR parameters and the related intramolecular hydrogen bonds.