Cyclic polyenes, large-ring

It is quite illuminating to use these results to comment ) on the stability of cyclic polyenes containing rings of various sizes compared to their open-chain analogs. The first moment which will be different for the pn orbitals of an m-ring compared with those of the open chain, or of a ring of large size, will be the m-th. Since in each neutral C H molecule there are m pjt orbitals and m electrons, the fractional orbital occupancy is 0.5. 

When a cyclic polyene is large enough, it can exist in both cis- and iraws-forms. Our approach to polyene cyclization has tacitly assumed an all cis -n chain in the form of a band or ribbon that would slip smoothly on to the surface of a cylinder of appropriate diameter. Should the orbitals of the two polyenes in (36) have a mismatch in their orbital symmetries, a single twist in the tt band of one of them could remedy this (Fig. 10c). Cycloaddition would now be allowed and the reaction would proceed, provided other factors were favorable. Such cases of Mobius (Zimmerman, 1966), anti (Fukui and Fujimoto, 1966b) or axisymmetric (Lemal and McGregor, 1966), as opposed to Hiickel, syn, or sigma-symmetric ring closure are unknown (or, at least, rare). A Mobius form has, however, been proposed as the key intermediate in the photochemical transformations of benzene (Farenhorst, 1966) in (48) in place of the disrotatory cyclization proposed by van Tamelen (1965). 

Torsion about one of the formal double bonds is invariably the most efficient excited singlet state decay process of acyclic polyenes, and also often occurs efficiently in cyclic systems of moderate-to-large ring size- . E.Z-isomerization in the excited singlet state manifold takes place about only one of the double bonds per photon, as was initially demonstrated for 2,4-hexadiene (5) by Saltiel and coworkers and has since been shown to be quite general. Table 1 contains a summary of quantum yields for the direct E,Z-photoisomerization, in solution, of acyclic and cyclic polyenes 1, 42, 43, 5-18 bearing various substituents. For the most part, quantum yields for direct E,Z-photoisomerization of aliphatic dienes are not highly dependent on the structure of the system (i.e. acyclic, cyclic or exocyclic). 

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