Three Interesting Structures Related to Phenol

Before ending the present section, we would like to briefly discuss the following three structures closely linked to the 5 o-state phenol molecule. 

It is well known that aliphatic carbonyl compounds with the hydrogens on C to the carbonyl group may undergo tautomeric transitions from the keto to the enol forms. The most stable tautomeric form of the o-state phenol molecule is in fact the enol form . The reason why the enol form of phenol is favoured over the keto form is quite simple.  

FIGURE 8. The normal displacements of the vibrational modes of phenol according to the Wilson s nomenclature. The B3LYP/6-31+G(d,p) method is employed. The assignments of the vibrational 

TABLE 10. Harmonic vibrational frequencies, IR intensities and assignments for phenoH 

FIGURE 10. The keto tautomeric form of phenol viewed at the B3LYP/6-31-FG(d,p) computational level. Bond lengths in A, bond angles in degrees 

---