4-[(4-Methylphenyl)sulfanyl]butan-2-one

In the title compound, C11H14OS, all non-H atoms are essentially coplanar, with a mean deviation of 0.023 Å. In the crystal, centrosymmetrically related molecules are weakly connected into dimers by pairs of C—H⋯O interactions. The dimers are further linked along the a axis by weak C—H⋯π and C—H⋯S interactions.

In the title compound, C 11 H 14 OS, all non-H atoms are essentially coplanar, with a mean deviation of 0.023 Å . In the crystal, centrosymmetrically related molecules are weakly connected into dimers by pairs of C-HÁ Á ÁO interactions. The dimers are further linked along the a axis by weak C-HÁ Á Á and C-HÁ Á ÁS interactions.

Comment
Sulfides containing a carbonyl group are versatile precursors for the synthesis of wide range of biologically interesting compounds (Page, 1999). The main approach to β-thiaketones is the addition of compounds containing an SH group to conjugated carbonyls (the thia-Michael reaction). We recently published a versatile method for electrochemical generation of the catalyst for this addition (Stevanović et al., 2012) and herein we report the structure of 4-(o-tolylthio)butan-2-one.
The molecule of the title compound ( Fig. 1) is essentially planar with a mean deviation of all non-H atoms of 0.023 Å.
Atoms O1 and C10 exhibit the highest deviation from the mean molecular plane of 0.047 (3) and -0.057 (2) Å, respectively. The crystal packing displays no classical hydrogen bonding. The carbonyl O1 acceptor is engaged only in a weak C10-H10c···O1 interaction (Table 1) which associates the centrosymmetric molecules into dimers (Fig. 2a). Pairs of C-H···π and C-H···S interactions (Table 1) connect the molecules along the a axis ( Figure 2b). In the absence of more relevant hydrogen bonding the weak C-H···S interactions can be considered important for the stabilization of the crystal structure (Francuski et al., 2011).

Experimental
The title compound was obtained by treating methyl vinyl ketone with the corresponding thiophenol in the presence of an electrochemically generated zirconium catalyst, following the reported procedure (Stevanović et al., 2012).

Refinement
All H atoms were placed at geometrically calculated positions and included in the refinement in the riding model approximation, with C-H lengths of 0.93 (CH), 0.96 (CH 3 ) and 0.97 (CH 2 ) Å. U iso of the H atoms was set at 1.5U eq of the parent C atom for the methyl group and at 1.2U eq otherwise.

Fractional atomic coordinates and isotropic or equivalent isotropic displacement parameters (Å 2 )
x y z U iso */U eq S1 0.31244 (10