Substituent Effect of Nitro Group on Aromaticity of Carbazole Rings

The molecular geometries of carbazole and its 17 nitro derivatives were optimized at the B3LYP/6-311++G(2d,2p) level of theory. The harmonic oscillator model of aromaticity and nucleus-independent chemical shift descriptors of pi-electron delocalization were calculated to estimate the aromaticity of the carbazole five- and six-membered rings. The biggest changes in the value of both descriptors were observed for the pyrrole ring. The nitro group attached to 3 and/or 6 positions of the carbazole ring system exerts only a slight influence on the benzene ring aromaticity.