Synthesis of novel β-lactams: Antioxidant activity, acetylcholinesterase inhibition and computational studies

•Novel β-Lactam derivatives have been synthesized.•The synthesized compounds exhibited promising antioxidant activity and acetylcholinesterase inhibition.•Molecular modeling was carried out for compounds AZN(5a) and AZF (5b) against Human acetylcholinesterase (PDB ID: 4EY7) and Binary complex of native hAChE (PDBID: 6O4W).•Computational calculations studies was conducted for compounds AZN(5a) and AZF(5b) utilizing DFT/B3LYP/6–31G(d) and HF/6–31G(d) basis sets.•FT-IR correlation between theoretical and experimental data of AZF(5b) was carried out.