Radical scavenging and antioxidant activities of essential oil components--an experimental and computational investigation.

The antioxidant activities of eighteen different essential oil components have been determined using the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical-scavenging assay, the 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid (ABTS) radical cation assay, and the ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay. The phenolic compounds, carvacrol, thymol, and eugenol, showed the best antioxidant activities, while camphor, menthol, and menthone were the least active. The structural and electronic properties of the essential oil components were assessed using density functional theory (DFT) at the B3LYP/6-311++G** level. Correlations between calculated electronic properties and antioxidant activities were generally poor, but bond-dissociation energies (BDEs) seem to correlate with DPPH radical-scavenging activities, and the ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay correlated with vertical ionization potentials calculated at the Hartree-Fock/6-311++G** level.