Crystal structure and Hirshfeld surface analysis of ( <i>E</i> )-2-[(anthracen-9-ylmethylidene)amino]-4-nitroaniline

The title compound, C₂₁H₁₅N₃O₂, contains a nitro-aniline ring and an anthracene ring system bridged over the methyl-ene amino group. The anthracene ring system is essentially planar with an r.m.s. deviation of 0.03 (2) Å and it is oriented at a dihedral angle of 79.70 (5)° with respect to nitro-aniline ring. There is an intra-molecular N-H⋯N hydrogen bond between N atoms of nitro-aniline ring and amino group. In the crystal, N-H-O hydrogen bonds link the mol-ecules into infinite chains along the <i>b</i>-axis direction. π-π stacking inter-actions between the nitro-aniline rings of adjacent mol-ecules with centroid-to-centroid distance of 3.7682 (2) Å and C-H⋯π(ring) inter-actions may help to consolidate the three-dimensional architecture. A Hirshfeld surface analysis indicates that the most important contributions for the crystal packing are from H⋯H (35.5%), H⋯C/C⋯H (33.7%) and H⋯O/O⋯H (18.3%) inter-actions.