Captodative effect

It has been postulated that the stability of free radicals is enhanced by the presence at the radical center of both an electron-donating and an electron-with-drawing group.This is called the push-pull or captodative effect (see also pp. 159). The effect arises from increased resonance, for example ... 

There is some evidence in favor ° of the captodative effect, some of it is from ESR studies. However, there is also experimental and theoretical evidence against it. There is evidence that while FCH2 and p2CH are more stable than CH3, the radical Cp3- is less stable that is, the presence of the third F destabilizes the radical. " Certain radicals with the unpaired electron not on a carbon are akso very stable. Diphenylpicrylhydrazyl is a solid that can be kept for years. We have already mentioned nitroxide radicals. Compound 29 is a nitroxide radical so stable that reactions can be performed on it without affecting the unpaired electron (the same is true for some of the chlorinated triarylmethyl radicals mentioned above ). ot-Trichloromethylbenzyl(rer/-butyl)aminoxyl (30) is extremely stable. In... 

One point of debate in defining the magnitude of the captodative effect has been the separation of substituent effects on the radical itself as compared to that on the closed shell reference system. This is, as stated before, a general problem for all definitions of radical stability based on isodesmic reactions such as Eq. 1 [7,74,76], but becomes particularly important in multiply substituted cases. This problem can be approached either through estimating the substituent effects for the closed shell parents separately [77,78], or through the use of isodesmic reactions such as Eq. 5, in which only open shell species are present ... 

Mutual conjugation of, as we describe it nowadays, + M and — M substituents is equivalent to an extra stabilization of the system. Thus, we can interpret this statement as the first formulation of the captodative effect even though the term was coined much later. The difficulty of organic chemists to comprehend the rather mathematically formulated theorem must have hindered its wider recognition and seems to be the reason that the phenomenon of interaction of -l-M and — M substituents has been reinvented several times since then. It is remarkable that these rediscoveries were always initiated by experimental studies in free radical chemistry. 

The familiarity with qualitative valence bond descriptions of substituent effects in combination with the known substituent effects in carbocations and carbanions led Viehe and his group to the postulate of a captodative effect for free radicals (Stella et ai, 1978 Viehe et al., 1979). They did not seem to be aware of the earlier work which was of a more physical organic character. The fact that carbocations [8] are stabilized by + M substituents, and carbanions [9] by - M substituents, raised the idea that free radicals, as... 

As no clear-cut conclusion can be drawn from the analysis of these ab initio calculations it is not surprising that further attempts have been made to answer the question of the existence of a special captodative effect by improving the calculational methods. Clark (Clark, 1988) has carried out extensive calculations for the cyanomethyl-, amlnomethyl- and aminocyano-methyl-radical system by perturbational methods including different amounts of correlation. The results using the isodesmic reactions (5)-(8) are shown in Table 5. 

In connection with the captodative effect, Riichardt (Zamkanei et al., 1983) has determined the BDE of the tertiary C—H bond in [20] and compared it with the tertiary bond in isobutane. He concludes that the stabilization of 12.8 kcal mol which he derives from this comparison falls 4kcal mol short of the value of 16.5 kcal mol which he calculates for the sum of the substituent effects for phenyl (9 kcal mol ), cyano- (5.5 kcal moP ) and methoxyl (1.5kcal mol ) groups. The latter values were derived from studies on C—C BDEs. Not even additivity of the substituent effects is observed. The existence of a captodative stabilization of radical [21] is denied (see, however, the studies on the thermolysis of [24]). 

If the reduction of C—C BDEs by captodative substitution is interpreted with the appropriate caution, it can be stated that a conclusive answer as to the existence of a captodative effect in free radicals cannot be derived from these studies, If, furthermore, a consequent error-propagation analysis had been carried out, the outcome might have been that the error limits do not allow a definitive conclusion. However, the results convey a feeling that— regardless of the pros and cons for the different determination procedures— a possible captodative effect will not be great. 

Several attempts have been made to analyse the captodative effect through rotational barriers in free radicals. This approach seems to be well suited as it is concerned directly with the radical, i.e. peculiarities associated with bond-breaking processes do not apply. However, in these cases also one has to be aware that any influence of a substituent on the barrier height for rotation is the result of its action in the ground state of the molecule and in the transition structure for rotation. Stabilization as well as destabilization of the two states could be involved. Each case has to be looked at individually and it is clear that this will provide a trend analysis rather than an absolute determination of the magnitude of substituent effects. In this respect the analysis of rotational barriers bears similar drawbacks to all of the other methods. 

The experimental result seems to support this model. Table 11 lists values for rotational barriers in some allyl radicals (Sustmann, 1986). It includes the rotational barrier in the isomeric 1-cyano-l-methoxyallyl radicals [32]/ [33] (Korth et al., 1984). In order to see whether the magnitude of the rotational barriers discloses a special captodative effect it is necessary to compare the monocaptor and donor-substituted radicals with disubstituted analogues. As is expected on the basis of the general influence of substituents on radical centres, both captor and donor substituents lower the rotational barrier, the captor substituent to a greater extent. Disubstitution by the same substituent, i.e. dicaptor- and didonor-substituted systems, do not even show additivity in the reduction of the rotational barrier. This phenomenon appears to be a general one and has led to the conclusion that additivity of substituent effects is already a manifestation of a special behaviour, viz., of a captodative effect. The barrier in the 1-cyano-l-methoxyallyl radicals [32]/... 

Benzylic radicals offer themselves to a similar analysis. Some barriers to rotation have been determined (Conradi et ai, 1979). The barrier to rotation of 9.8 + 0.8 kcal mol for the a-cyano-a-methoxybenzyl radical [21] (Korth et al., 1985) could not be interpreted rigorously in terms of a captodative effect because estimates had to be made for the effect of a single captor or donor substituent on the rotational barrier. Within these limitations the barrier does not reflect more than an additive substituent effect. 

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... 

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