Crystal structure, Hirshfeld surface analysis and DFT studies of 2-[5-(4-methyl­benz­yl)-6-oxo-3-phenyl-1,6-di­hydro­pyridazin-1-yl]acetic acid

The title pyridazinone derivative, C20H18N2O3, is not planar. The phenyl ring and the pyridazine ring are inclined to each other by 10.55 (12)°, whereas the 4-methyl­benzyl ring is nearly orthogonal to the pyridazine ring, with a dihedral angle of 72.97 (10)°. In the crystal, mol­ecules are linked by pairs of O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, forming inversion dimers with an R22(14) ring motif. The dimers are linked by C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, generating ribbons propagating along the c-axis direction. The inter­molecular inter­actions were additionally investigated using Hirshfeld surface analysis and two-dimensional fingerprint plots. They revealed that the most significant contributions to the crystal packing are from H⋯H (48.4%), H⋯O/O⋯H (21.8%) and H⋯C/C⋯H (20.4%) contacts. Mol­ecular orbital calculations providing electron-density plots of HOMO and LUMO mol­ecular orbitals and mol­ecular electrostatic potentials (MEP) were also computed, both with the DFT/B3LYP/6–311 G++(d,p) basis set.