Optical Rotation Calculations for a Set of Pyrrole Compounds

Optical rotation of 14 molecules containing the pyrrole group is calculated by employing both time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) with the CAM-B3LYP functional and the second-order approximate coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CC2) method. All optical rotations have been provided using the aug-cc-pVDZ basis set at λ = 589 nm. The two methods predict similar results for both sign and magnitude for the optical rotation of all molecules. The obtained signs are consistent with experiments as well, although several conformers for four molecules needed to be studied to reproduce the experimental sign. We have also calculated excitation energies and rotatory strengths for the six lowest lying electronic transitions for several conformers of the two smallest molecules and found that each rotatory strength has various contributions for each conformer which can cause different optical rotations for different conformers of a molecule. Our results illustrate that both methods are able to reproduce the experimental optical rotations, and that the CAM-B3LYP functional, the least computationally expensive method used here, is an applicable and reliable method to predict the optical rotation for these molecules in line with previous studies.