Computational studies on a selection of phosphite esters as antioxidants for polymeric materials

Phosphite esters, a class of organo-phosphorus compounds, are widely used as non-discolouring antioxidants in many polymeric products. Apart from normal radical scavenging, they prevent the splitting of hydroperoxides (ROOH), one of the initial products of autoxidation, from forming extremely reactive free radicals such as alkoxy (RO.) and hydroxy (.OH) radicals. The inherent molecular properties of antioxidants and the chemistry of their action are essential for researchers working in this field of science. Four organo-phosphorous compounds well-known for their antioxidant activity are selected here for theoretical analysis: Tri(m-methylphenyl) phosphite (m-TMPP), Tri(4-methyl-2,6-di-tert-butylphenyl) phosphite (TMdtBPP), Tri(allylphenyl) phosphite (TAPP) and Tri(mercaptobenzothiazoyl) thiophosphate (TMBTTP). The antioxidant activity exhibited by these compounds is theoretically verified, and the results are consistent with the available experimental data. Such theoretical predictions offer advantages in scientific research, particularly when researchers need to select certain molecules as antioxidants for experiments from a pool of molecular systems.

The chemical computations presented in this report are done in Gaussian 16 program package. The procedure of density functional theory (DFT) with the model chemistry B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) is used to generate computational data. Global reactivity indices, thermochemical data, Fukui functions, molecular electrostatic potential and NMR spectra are computed for the chosen molecular systems from their optimized geometries.