Ethyl 3,5-dimethyl-4-phenyl-1H-pyrrole-2-carboxylate

In the title compound, C(15)H(17)NO(2), the ethoxycarbonyl group is anti with respect to the pyrrole N atom. The angle between the planes of the phenyl and pyrrole rings is 48.26 (9) degrees. The molecules are joined into dimeric units by a strong hydrogen bonds between pyrrole N-H groups and carbonyl O atoms. The geometry of the isolated molecule was studied by ab initio quantum mechanical calculations, employing both molecular orbital Hartree-Fock (MO-HF) and density functional theory (DFT) methods. The minimum energy was achieved for a conformation where the angle between the planes of the phenyl and pyrrole rings is larger, and that between the ethoxycarbonyl and pyrrole planes is smaller than in the solid-state molecule.