1-(Benzyloxy)naphthalene

In the title compound, C17H14O, the dihedral angle between the naphthyl ring system and the benzyl group is 83.22 (4)°. Both of these moieties are planar, with mean deviations from their least-squares planes, defined by the naphthyl ring C atoms and the O atom, and the phenyl ring C atoms and the benzyl α-C atom, of 0.0176 (1) and 0.0024 (13) Å, respectively. The crystal structure is stabilized by C—H⋯π and π–π interactions [centroid–centroid distance = 3.7817 (10) Å].

In the title compound, C 17 H 14 O, the dihedral angle between the naphthyl ring system and the benzyl group is 83.22 (4) . Both of these moieties are planar, with mean deviations from their least-squares planes, defined by the naphthyl ring C atoms and the O atom, and the phenyl ring C atoms and the benzyl -C atom, of 0.0176 (1) and 0.0024 (13) Å , respectively. The crystal structure is stabilized by C-HÁ Á Á andinteractions [centroid-centroid distance = 3.7817 (10) Å ].

Comment
Benzyl groups are commonly used in organic synthesis as protecting group for alcohol, phenol, naphthol and carboxylic acids, because they are stable to acid, alkali and number of other usual reagents (Rao & Senthilkumar, 2001, He et al., 2008. Benzyl ether intermediates can play an important role in sigmatropic rearrangement reactions such as Claisen and Cope rearrangements (Salunkhe et al., 1994). Similarly, benzyl ethers have been used in the chemical engineering of macromolecules (Scanu et al., 2007). The aromatic ether derivatives of naphthols have been used in the field of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and fungicides (Fernandes et al., 2011). In the view of the importance of these compounds, we recently reported a simple method for the preparation of 1-naphthyl ethers (Mohamed & Arunadevi, 2010). In this connection, the crystal structure of the title compound is reported here.
In the crystal structure of the title compound ( Fig. 1), both the naphthyl ring and phenyl ring are planar with a mean deviation from the least-squares plane defined by naphthyl ring carbon atoms (C1-C10) and O1 of 0.0176(0.001) Å.
Similarly the mean deviation for the phenyl ring carbon atoms (C11-C16) and C17 of the benzyl group is 0.024(0.0013) Å. The dihedral angle between both planes is 83.22(0.04) °.
The product was characterized by spectral data and compared with pervious report (Mohamed & Arunadevi, 2010).