Carbenes triplet state

Schrock carbene complexes may be identified by their alkyl substituents on the carbene carbon and an electropositive, early-transition metal. As shown in Figure 2, the Schrock complexes are considered a result of spin-coupling between the carbene triplet state and the two electrons on the metal [8]. The reactivity of the Schrock carbene carbon is nucleophilic [4]. The reaction involving bis(cyclopentadienyl)carbene titanium(IV) and the electrophile acyl chloride in Eq. (3) [9], for example, illustrates the nucleophilicity of... 

Infrared spectra of a carbene and the cyclopropane product have been observed in an argon matrix at 12-45 K. Carbenes in the triplet state react nonstereospecifi-... 

Electrophilic and nucleophilic phosphinidene complexes have been related to the corresponding carbene complexes of which the Fischer-type is usually considered as a singlet-singlet combination and the Schrock-type as a triplet-triplet combination. However, both the strongly preferred triplet state of R-P and the M=P bond analysis suggest this schematic interpretation to be less appropriate for transition metal complexed phosphinidenes. 

The comparatively small size of the simplest carbene (methylene) ensures that it has a definite mobility in frozen inert matrices, which leads to the formation of dimerization products under these conditions. It became possible only in 1981 to detect in the spectra of the diazomethane photolysis products bands at 1115 cm (Ar matrix) and 1109 cm (Xe matrix) which were attributed to the deformation vibration of methylene in its ground triplet state (Lee and Pimentel, 1981). 

Oxo-2,5-cyclohexadienylidene [83] was generated in solid argon at 9 K by irradiation of diazo compound [84] with visible light (A>495 nm) (Sander et al., 1988 Bucher and Sander, 1992 Bucher et al., 1992). The IR, UV, and esr spectra of [83] were in accord with a structure having a triplet state with one delocalized electron. In the IR spectrum of the carbene [83] the r (CO) mode was found at 1496 cm which indicates a bond order of the C—O bond considerably less than 2. The low-temperature reaction of carbene [83] with CO generated the keto-ketene [85]. Irradiation (A = 543 10 nm) of [83] led to its transformation into a very labile species, presumed to be [86], which rearranged back to [83] not only under UV or... 

From the point of view of both synthetic and mechanistic interest, much attention has been focused on the addition reaction between carbenes and alkenes to give cyclopropanes. Characterization of the reactivity of substituted carbenes in addition reactions has emphasized stereochemistry and selectivity. The reactivities of singlet and triplet states are expected to be different. The triplet state is a diradical, and would be expected to exhibit a selectivity similar to free radicals and other species with unpaired electrons. The singlet state, with its unfilled p orbital, should be electrophilic and exhibit reactivity patterns similar to other electrophiles. Moreover, a triplet addition... 

The triplet state is usually the ground state for non-conjugated structures, but either species can be involved in reactions. The most common method for generating nitrene intermediates, analogous to formation of carbenes from diazo compounds, is by thermolysis or photolysis of azides.246... 

Enthalpies of formation for the singlet and triplet states of methylene were obtained from the photodissociation of ketene.131 The data for CH2 (3Bi) were recently confirmed by methods which do not rely on ketene.132,133 In a widely applicable procedure, threshold collision energies for the loss of halide ion from RR C-X- were combined with gas phase acidities of RR CH-Cl to give AHf (RR C ) (Eq. 11).134 Similarly, gas phase acidities of the radicals RR CH were combined with ionization energies of the radical anions RR C -, or electron affinities of the carbenes RR C (Eq. 12).135136... 

The early calculations on cycloheptatrienylidene (4a) uniformly found it to be higher in energy than allene 3a. INDO calculations by W.M. Jones and co-workers predicted carbene 4a to be 14 kcal/mol less stable than allene 3a.28a Waali s MNDO calculations predicted that singlet 4a is 23 kcal/mol less stable than 3a, and that 4a serves as a transition state for the enantiomerization of 3a.28c,e The HF/4-31G ab initio calculations of Radom et al. also found both singlet and triplet states of 4a to be less stable than allene 3a.29a... 

The transient triplet carbene formed from irradiation of DABA in benzene can be observed to react with styrene. For this process laser spectroscopy reveals a bimolecular rate constant (ksty) equal to 1.2 x 107M-1s-1. The product of the reaction is the expected cyclopropane. This observation clearly supports the spectral assignment of the carbene made above. When deuteriated a-methylstyrene is substituted for styrene as a trap for the carbene, the cyclopropane that results is a 1 1 mixture of stereoisomers, (20) (Table 6). This finding indicates that BA is reacting in this sequence exclusively from its ground triplet state. 

The simple reaction scheme outlined in Scheme 2 easily accommodates the results obtained in the investigation of XA. The basic scheme is just the same as it is for BA except that the relative energies of the singlet and triplet states of the carbene are reversed. All of the evidence points to a singlet ground state for XA. This includes the absence of an epr signal, the nearly diffusion-controlled formation of ether in direct and sensitized experiments, the stereospecific cyclopropanation, and the absence of a rapid reaction of the carbene with 02. 

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