The Effect of Substituents on Indirect Nuclear Spin-Spin Coupling Constants: Methan- and Ethanimine, Methanal- and Ethanaloxime

Ab initio calculations of the spin-spin coupling constants have been carried out for methanand ethanimine, methanaland ethanaloxime at the level of the second order polarization propagator approximation with coupled cluster singles and doubles amplitudes (SOPPA(CCSD)) using the aug-cc-pVTZ-J basis sets. Previously we have shown that this method can reproduce quantitatively the coupling constants for methanimine; our new results for methanaland ethanaloxime agree also very well with the measured couplings. A study of both purely geometrical and substituent effects on all coupling constants in the title compounds is presented. Analyzing the four contributions to the coupling constants we find that the stereoelectronic effect of the nitrogen lone pair on the one-bond C-H and C-C couplings as well as the corresponding effect for the geminal N-H and N-C couplings is affected strongly by the -OH substituent. For the one-bond C-N couplings we observe that the orbital paramagnetic (OP) contribution is comparable to the Fermi Contact (FC) contribution but opposite in sign and that the spin-dipolar (SD) term amounts to between 40% and 85% of the total coupling constants. Changes in the total one-bond C-N couplings caused by the -OH substituent are also almost entirely due to SD contribution.