Captodative effect stabilization energies

The study of the rotational barriers in captodative-substituted radicals leads to the following conclusions the barriers are noticeably lower or higher than in cases of dicaptor or didonor substitution. This can be interpreted as the consequence of a captodative effect in these systems. However, the amount of special influence on the barrier height in energetic terms is small and may sometimes not exceed the numerical uncertainties. A derivation of absolute values for stabilization energies of captodative-substituted radicals by this procedure is not possible, since both ground and transition states are affected by substitution. The lowering of the barriers... 

The first indication of the existence of a captodative substituent effect by Dewar (1952) was based on 7t-molecular orbital theory. The combined action of the n-electrons of a donor and a captor substituent on the total Jt-electron energy of a free radical was derived by perturbation theory. Besides the formulation of this special stabilizing situation and the quotation of a literature example [5] (Goldschmidt, 1920, 1929) as experimental evidence, the elaboration of the phenomenon was not pursued further, neither theoretically nor experimentally. 

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