Complex, activated

As a structural bridge between reactants and products, die activated complex has structural features of both. For example, consider a very simple reaction, the ionization of a tertiary bromide to a carbocation and a bromide ion in methanol. The reactant is a fully covalent molecule with a complete, yet polarized, bond between the tertiary carbon and the bromine atom. 

The products contain a trivalent, positively charged carbon atom surrounded by a solvent shell and a bromide ion which carries a negative charge and is surrounded and hydrogen bonded to a shell of solvent molecules. The distance between the carbon and the bromine atom in the products is much greater than in the reactants. The bond between carbon and bromine is broken as the bromide moves away from the carbon and the pair of bonding electrons ends up in the valence shell of the bromide ion. We can depict this reaction using curved-arrow notation which tracks electron movement. 

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Eyring H 1934 The activated complex in chemical reactions J. Chem. Phys. 3 107... 

Eyring H 1935 The activated complex in chemical reactions J. Chem. Phys. 3 107-15 Hofacker L 1963 Quantentheorie chemischer Reaktionen Z. Naturf. A 18 607-19 Robinson P J and Holbrook K A 1972 Unimolecular Reactions (New York Wiley)... 

Electrochemical processes can become diffusion controlled if the fonnation of the activated complex is fast compared with the diffusion of the reacting anion to the surface or dissolving cations from the surface. In aqueous... 

Modem electron transfer tlieory has its conceptual origins in activated complex tlieory, and in tlieories of nonradiative decay. The analysis by Marcus in tire 1950s provided quantitative connections between the solvent characteristics and tire key parameters controlling tire rate of ET. The Marcus tlieory predicts an adiabatic bimolecular ET rate as... 

In many instances tire adiabatic ET rate expression overestimates tire rate by a considerable amount. In some circumstances simply fonning tire tire activated state geometry in tire encounter complex does not lead to ET. This situation arises when tire donor and acceptor groups are very weakly coupled electronically, and tire reaction is said to be nonadiabatic. As tire geometry of tire system fluctuates, tire species do not move on tire lowest potential energy surface from reactants to products. That is, fluctuations into activated complex geometries can occur millions of times prior to a productive electron transfer event. 

Figure 1.2. Endo and exo pathway for the Diels-Alder reaction of cyclopentadiene with methyl vinyl ketone. As was first noticed by Berson, the polarity of the endo activated complex exceeds that of the exo counterpart due to alignment of the dipole moments of the diene and the dienophile K The symmetry-allowed secondary orbital interaction that is only possible in the endo activated complex is usually invoked as an explanation for the preference for endo adduct exhibited by most Diels-Alder reactions.

In summary, it seems that for most Diels-Alder reactions secondary orbital interactions afford a satisfactory rationalisation of the endo-exo selectivity. However, since the endo-exo ratio is determined by small differences in transition state energies, the influence of other interactions, most often steric in origin and different for each particular reaction, is likely to be felt. The compact character of the Diels-Alder activated complex (the activation volume of the retro Diels-Alder reaction is negative) will attenuate these eflfects. The ideas of Sustmann" and Mattay ° provide an attractive alternative explanation, but, at the moment, lack the proper experimental foundation. 

In 1961 Berson et al. were the first to study systematically the effect of the solvent on the endo-exo selectivity of the Diels-Alder reaction . They interpreted the solvent dependence of the endo-exo ratio by consideririg the different polarities of the individual activated complexes involved. The endo activated complex is of higher polarity than the exo activated complex, because in the former the dipole moments of diene and dienophile are aligned, whereas in the latter they are pointing in... 

The regioselectivity benefits from the increased polarisation of the alkene moiety, reflected in the increased difference in the orbital coefficients on carbon 1 and 2. The increase in endo-exo selectivity is a result of an increased secondary orbital interaction that can be attributed to the increased orbital coefficient on the carbonyl carbon ". Also increased dipolar interactions, as a result of an increased polarisation, will contribute. Interestingly, Yamamoto has demonstrated that by usirg a very bulky catalyst the endo-pathway can be blocked and an excess of exo product can be obtained The increased di as tereo facial selectivity has been attributed to a more compact transition state for the catalysed reaction as a result of more efficient primary and secondary orbital interactions as well as conformational changes in the complexed dienophile" . Calculations show that, with the polarisation of the dienophile, the extent of asynchronicity in the activated complex increases . Some authors even report a zwitteriorric character of the activated complex of the Lewis-acid catalysed reaction " . Currently, Lewis-acid catalysis of Diels-Alder reactions is everyday practice in synthetic organic chemistry. 

In summary, a wealtli of experimental data as well as a number of sophisticated computer simulations univocally indicate that two important effects underlie the acceleration of Diels-Alder reactions in aqueous media hydrogen bonding and enforced hydrophobic interactionsIn terms of transition state theory hydrophobic hydration raises the initial state more tlian tlie transition state and hydrogen bonding interactions stabilise ftie transition state more than the initial state. The highly polarisable activated complex plays a key role in both of these effects. 

Breslow studied the dimerisation of cyclopentadiene and the reaction between substituted maleimides and 9-(hydroxymethyl)anthracene in alcohol-water mixtures. He successfully correlated the rate constant with the solubility of the starting materials for each Diels-Alder reaction. From these relations he estimated the change in solvent accessible surface between initial state and activated complex " . Again, Breslow completely neglects hydrogen bonding interactions, but since he only studied alcohol-water mixtures, the enforced hydrophobic interactions will dominate the behaviour. Recently, also Diels-Alder reactions in dilute salt solutions in aqueous ethanol have been studied and minor rate increases have been observed Lubineau has demonstrated that addition of sugars can induce an extra acceleration of the aqueous Diels-Alder reaction . Also the effect of surfactants on Diels-Alder reactions has been studied. This topic will be extensively reviewed in Chapter 4. 

Table 2.10 shows the effect of substituents on the endo-exo ratio. Under homogeneous conditions there is hardly any substituent effect on the selectivity. Consequently the substituents must have equal effects on the Gibbs energies of the endo and the exo activated complex. 

In summary, when using a ligand catalyst ratio of 1.75 1 at pH 5-6 the enantioselectivity of the Diels-Alder reaction between 3.8c and 3.9 is dictated by the activated complexes involving ligand, copper(ir) ion, dienophile and diene. Considering that four different products are formed in this reaction (see Scheme 3.5), at least four different activated complexes are involved However, each of these complexes hus two degrees of freedom that determine the stereochemical outcome of the... 

The observation that in the activated complex the reaction centre has lost its hydrophobic character, can have important consequences. The retro Diels-Alder reaction, for instance, will also benefit from the breakdown of the hydrophobic hydration shell during the activation process. The initial state of this reaction has a nonpolar character. Due to the principle of microscopic reversibility, the activated complex of the retro Diels-Alder reaction is identical to that of the bimoleciilar Diels-Alder reaction which means this complex has a negligible nonpolar character near the reaction centre. O nsequently, also in the activation process of the retro Diels-Alder reaction a significant breakdown of hydrophobic hydration takes placed Note that for this process the volume of activation is small, which implies that the number of water molecules involved in hydration of the reacting system does not change significantly in the activation process. 

In the case of the retro Diels-Alder reaction, the nature of the activated complex plays a key role. In the activation process of this transformation, the reaction centre undergoes changes, mainly in the electron distributions, that cause a lowering of the chemical potential of the surrounding water molecules. Most likely, the latter is a consequence of an increased interaction between the reaction centre and the water molecules. Since the enforced hydrophobic effect is entropic in origin, this implies that the orientational constraints of the water molecules in the hydrophobic hydration shell are relieved in the activation process. Hence, it almost seems as if in the activated complex, the hydrocarbon part of the reaction centre is involved in hydrogen bonding interactions. Note that the... 

The rate of the Lewis-acid catalysed Diels-Alder reaction in water has been compared to that in other solvents. The results demonstrate that the expected beneficial effect of water on the Lewis-acid catalysed reaction is indeed present. However, the water-induced acceleration of the Lewis-add catalysed reaction is not as pronounced as the corresponding effect on the uncatalysed reaction. The two effects that underlie the beneficial influence of water on the uncatalysed Diels-Alder reaction, enforced hydrophobic interactions and enhanced hydrogen bonding of water to the carbonyl moiety of 1 in the activated complex, are likely to be diminished in the Lewis-acid catalysed process. Upon coordination of the Lewis-acid catalyst to the carbonyl group of the dienophile, the catalyst takes over from the hydrogen bonds an important part of the activating influence. Also the influence of enforced hydrophobic interactions is expected to be significantly reduced in the Lewis-acid catalysed Diels-Alder reaction. Obviously, the presence of the hydrophilic Lewis-acid diminished the nonpolar character of 1 in the initial state. 

Here we have the formation of the activated complex from five molecules of nitric acid, previously free, with a high negative entropy change. The concentration of molecular aggregates needed might increase with a fall in temperature in agreement with the characteristics of the reaction already described. It should be noticed that nitration in nitromethane shows the more common type of temperature-dependence (fig. 3.1). 

The structure that exists at the transition state is some times referred to as the tran sition structure or the activated complex... 

The activated complex theory has been developed extensively for chemical reactions as well as for deformation processes. The full details of the theory are not necessary for us. Instead, it is sufficient to note that k can be written as... 

This expression gives us the rate constant for the net rate of forward flow according to the activated complex theory. 

Activation Parameters. Thermal processes are commonly used to break labile initiator bonds in order to form radicals. The amount of thermal energy necessary varies with the environment, but absolute temperature, T, is usually the dominant factor. The energy barrier, the minimum amount of energy that must be suppHed, is called the activation energy, E. A third important factor, known as the frequency factor, is a measure of bond motion freedom (translational, rotational, and vibrational) in the activated complex or transition state. The relationships of yi, E and T to the initiator decomposition rate (kJ) are expressed by the Arrhenius first-order rate equation (eq. 16) where R is the gas constant, and and E are known as the activation parameters. 

Electrode kinetics lend themselves to treatment usiag the absolute reaction rate theory or the transition state theory (36,37). In these treatments, the path followed by the reaction proceeds by a route involving an activated complex where the element determining the reaction rate, ie, the rate limiting step, is the dissociation of the activated complex. The general electrode reaction may be described as ... 

Fig. 4. Fibrinolytic system where SCUPA is single-chain urokinase plasminogen activator rTPA is recombinant tissue plasminogen activator APSAC is acylated plasminogen streptokinase activator complex SK is streptokinase and UK is urokinase.

APSAC = acylated plasminogen streptokinase activator complex. 

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