Dihydroquinolinone and Hexahydroacridinone Chalcones: Synthesis, Experimental, and Theoretical Investigations of Their Photophysical and Biological Activities.

Herein, we report the camphor sulfonic acid (CSA)-mediated sequential synthesis of dihydroquinolinone- and hexahydroacridinone-based chalcones. This methodology includes cyclization, oxidation, and Claisen-Schmidt condensation reactions, employing various substituted chalcones, diketones, NH₄OAc, and aldehydes under solvent-free conditions. The features of this approach included the use of readily available starting materials, moderate reaction conditions, operational simplicity, and scalability to gram-scale synthesis. The optical properties of the synthesized compounds were investigated through absorption and emission spectroscopy. Additionally, their quantum chemical parameters, molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) surfaces, and electronic transitions were analyzed using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) calculations with the B3LYP/6-31G(d) basis set. Moreover, exploring the synthesized derivatives' biological activities revealed promising antimicrobial and antioxidant properties.