Altering the Allowed/Forbidden Gap in Cyclobutene Electrocyclic Reactions: Experimental and Theoretical Evaluations of the Effect of Planarity Constraints

Autor: E. Adam Kallel, Peter Hörstermann, W. R. Roth, Kendall N. Houk, Shogo Sakai, Patrick Lee
Rok vydání: 2003
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of the American Chemical Society. 125:5839-5848
ISSN: 1520-5126
0002-7863
DOI: 10.1021/ja028963g
Popis: The allowed conrotatory cyclobutene ring-opening has a distinctly nonplanar carbon skeleton. Classic experiments by Brauman and Archie, and by Freedman et al., placed the allowed/forbidden gap at greater than 15 kcal/mol. Wolfgang Roth proposed that a system forced to planarity might have a smaller preference for the conrotatory mode than unconstrained systems. Such systems have now been studied theoretically and experimentally, and results that confirm Roth's postulate are presented here. The experiments were performed in Bochum, and the calculations were carried out in Osaka and Los Angeles. As the cyclobutene ring-opening transition structure approaches planarity, the energy gap between allowed conrotatory and the forbidden disrotatory pathways decreases. For the ring-opening of a cyclobutene fused to norbornene, the energy gap between the forbidden and the allowed transition state is only 4.1 kcal/mol by CASSCF and 8.0 kcal/mol by CAS-MP2 as compared to 13.4 and 19.2 kcal/mol, respectively, for the parent cyclobutene. Experimental studies of 3,4-dimethylcyclobutenes fused to various ring systems are reported, and a trend is found toward a reduced allowed/forbidden gap as the planarity of the cyclobutene is enforced.
Databáze: OpenAIRE