Analysis of Conformational, Structural, Magnetic, and Electronic Properties Related to Antioxidant Activity: Revisiting Flavan, Anthocyanidin, Flavanone, Flavonol, Isoflavone, Flavone, and Flavan-3-ol.

Understanding the antioxidant activity of flavonoids is important to investigate their biological activities as well as to design novel molecules with low toxicity and high activity. Aromaticity is a chemical property found in cyclic structures that plays an important role in their stability and reactivity, and its investigation can help us to understand the antioxidant activity of some heterocyclic compounds. In the present study, we applied the density functional theory (DFT) to investigate the properties of seven flavonoid structures with well-reported antioxidant activity: flavan, anthocyanidin, flavanone, flavonol, isoflavone, flavone, and flavan-3-ol. Conformational, structural, magnetic, and electronic analyses were performed using nuclear magnetic resonance, ionization potentials, electron affinity, bond dissociation energy, proton affinity, frontier molecular orbitals (highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO)/lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO)), and aromaticity through nucleus-independent chemical shifts to analyze these seven flavonoid structures. We revised the influence of hydroxyl groups on the properties of flavonoids and also investigated the influence of the aromaticity of these seven flavonoids on the antioxidant activity.