1,4-Cycloaddition reactions concerted

Cycloaddition involves the combination of two molecules in such a way that a new ring is formed. The principles of conservation of orbital symmetry also apply to concerted cycloaddition reactions and to the reverse, concerted fragmentation of one molecule into two or more smaller components (cycloreversion). The most important cycloaddition reaction from the point of view of synthesis is the Diels-Alder reaction. This reaction has been the object of extensive theoretical and mechanistic study, as well as synthetic application. The Diels-Alder reaction is the addition of an alkene to a diene to form a cyclohexene. It is called a [47t + 27c]-cycloaddition reaction because four tc electrons from the diene and the two n electrons from the alkene (which is called the dienophile) are directly involved in the bonding change. For most systems, the reactivity pattern, regioselectivity, and stereoselectivity are consistent with describing the reaction as a concerted process. In particular, the reaction is a stereospecific syn (suprafacial) addition with respect to both the alkene and the diene. This stereospecificity has been demonstrated with many substituted dienes and alkenes and also holds for the simplest possible example of the reaction, that of ethylene with butadiene ... 

How do orbital symmetry requirements relate to [4tc - - 2tc] and other cycloaddition reactions Let us constmct a correlation diagram for the addition of butadiene and ethylene to give cyclohexene. For concerted addition to occur, the diene must adopt an s-cis conformation. Because the electrons that are involved are the n electrons in both the diene and dienophile, it is expected that the reaction must occur via a face-to-face rather than edge-to-edge orientation. When this orientation of the reacting complex and transition state is adopted, it can be seen that a plane of symmetry perpendicular to the planes of the... 

When the orbitals have been classified with respect to symmetry, they can be arranged according to energy and the correlation lines can be drawn as in Fig. 11.10. From the orbital correlation diagram, it can be concluded that the thermal concerted cycloadditon reaction between butadiene and ethylene is allowed. All bonding levels of the reactants correlate with product ground-state orbitals. Extension of orbital correlation analysis to cycloaddition reactions involving other numbers of n electrons leads to the conclusion that the suprafacial-suprafacial addition is allowed for systems with 4n + 2 n electrons but forbidden for systems with 4n 7t electrons. 

In contrast, when ot,P-unsaturated multiple bond systems act as dienophiles in concerted [4+2] cycloaddition reactions, they react across the C=C double bond Periselectivity as well as regiochemistry are explained on the basis of the size of the orbital coefficients and the resonance integrals [25S]... 

Cycloaddition reactions are close to the heart of many chemists - these reactions have fascinated the chemical community for generations. In a series of communications in the sixties. Woodward and Hoffmann [2] laid down the fundamental basis for the theoretical treatment of all concerted reactions. The basic principle enunciated was that reactions occur readily when there is congruence between the orbital symmetry characteristics of reactants and products, and only with difficulty when that congruence is absent - or to put it more succinctly, orbital symmetry is conserved in concerted reactions [3]. 

There have been few mechanistic studies of Lewis acid-catalyzed cycloaddition reactions with carbonyl compounds. Danishefsky et ah, for example, concluded that the reaction of benzaldehyde 1 with trans-l-methoxy-3-(trimethylsilyloxy)-l,3-di-methyl-1,3-butadiene (Danishefsky s diene) 2 in the presence of BF3 as the catalyst proceeds via a stepwise mechanism, whereas a concerted reaction occurs when ZnCl2 or lanthanides are used as catalysts (Scheme 4.3) [7]. The evidence of a change in the diastereochemistry of the reaction is that trans-3 is the major cycloaddition product in the Bp3-catalyzed reaction, whereas cis-3 is the major product in, for example, the ZnCl2-catalyzed reaction - the latter resulting from exo addition (Scheme 4.3). 

A simple approach for the formation of 2-substituted 3,4-dihydro-2H-pyrans, which are useful precursors for natural products such as optically active carbohydrates, is the catalytic enantioselective cycloaddition reaction of a,/ -unsaturated carbonyl compounds with electron-rich alkenes. This is an inverse electron-demand cycloaddition reaction which is controlled by a dominant interaction between the LUMO of the 1-oxa-1,3-butadiene and the HOMO of the alkene (Scheme 4.2, right). This is usually a concerted non-synchronous reaction with retention of the configuration of the die-nophile and results in normally high regioselectivity, which in the presence of Lewis acids is improved and, furthermore, also increases the reaction rate. 

The major developments of catalytic enantioselective cycloaddition reactions of carbonyl compounds with conjugated dienes have been presented. A variety of chiral catalysts is available for the different types of carbonyl compound. For unactivated aldehydes chiral catalysts such as BINOL-aluminum(III), BINOL-tita-nium(IV), acyloxylborane(III), and tridentate Schiff base chromium(III) complexes can catalyze highly diastereo- and enantioselective cycloaddition reactions. The mechanism of these reactions can be a stepwise pathway via a Mukaiyama aldol intermediate or a concerted mechanism. For a-dicarbonyl compounds, which can coordinate to the chiral catalyst in a bidentate fashion, the chiral BOX-copper(II)... 

Mechanistically the 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction very likely is a concerted one-step process via a cyclic transition state. The transition state is less symmetric and more polar as for a Diels-Alder reaction however the symmetry of the frontier orbitals is similar. In order to describe the bonding of the 1,3-dipolar compound, e.g. diazomethane 4, several Lewis structures can be drawn that are resonance structures ... 

According to the Woodw ard-Hofmann rules the concerted thermal [2n + 2n] cycloaddition reaction of alkenes 1 in a suprafacial manner is symmetry-forbidden, and is observed in special cases only. In contrast the photochemical [2n + 2n cycloaddition is symmetry-allowed, and is a useful method for the synthesis of cyclobutane derivatives 2. 

Mechanistically the observed stereospecificity can be rationalized by a concerted, pericyclic reaction. In a one-step cycloaddition reaction the dienophile 8 adds 1,4 to the diene 7 via a six-membered cyclic, aromatic transition state 9, where three r-bonds are broken and one jr- and two cr-bonds are formed. The arrangement of the substituents relative to each other at the stereogenic centers of the reactants is retained in the product 10, as a result of the stereospecific y -addition. 

An explanation for the finding that concerted [4 -I- 2] cycloadditions take place thermally, while concerted [2 + 2] cycloadditions occur under photochemical conditions, is given through the principle of conservation of orbital symmetry. According to the Woodw ard-Hofmann rules derived thereof, a concerted, pericyclic [4 -I- 2] cycloaddition reaction from the ground state is symmetry-allowed. 

Concerted (Section 30.1) A reaction that Lakes place in a single step without intermediates. For example, the Diels-Alder cycloaddition reaction is a concerted process. 

As applied to cycloaddition reactions the rule is that reactions are allowed only when all overlaps between the HOMO of one reactant and the LUMO of the other are such that a positive lobe overlaps only with another positive lobe and a negative lobe only with another negative lobe. We may recall that monoalkenes have two n molecular orbitals (p. 9) and that conjugated dienes have four (p. 36), as shown in Figure 15.1. A concerted cyclization of two monoalkenes (a 2 -f- 2 reaction) is not allowed because it would require that a positive lobe overlap with a negative lobe (Fig. 15.2). On the other hand, the Diels-Alder reaction (a 2 -f 4 reaction) is allowed, whether considered from either direction (Fig. 15.3). 

An electron donating butadiene with the methoxy substituents at the 1 and 4 positions was calculated to undergo a concerted [4+2] cycloaddition reaction with TCNE as... 

The dimerization of the parent ketene gives the P-lactone. One molecule of ketene reacts across the C=C bond as a donor and the other molecule reacts across the C=0 bond as an acceptor. This is similar to the concerted [2+2] cycloaddition reaction between bis(trifluoromethyl)ketene and ethyl vinyl ether to afford the oxetane (Scheme 26) [127], A lone pair on the carbonyl oxygen in the ketene molecule as a donor activates the C=C bond as the alkoxy group in vinyl ether. 

Several other types of addition reactions of alkenes are also of importance and these are discussed elsewhere. Nucleophilic additions to electrophilic alkenes are covered in Section 2.6 and cycloadditions involving concerted mechanisms are encountered in Sections 6.1 to 6.3. Free radical addition reaction are considered in Chapter 11. 

Cycloaddition reactions result in the formation of a new ring from two reactants. A concerted mechanism requires that a single transition state, and therefore no intermediate, lie on the reaction path between reactants and adduct. The most important example of cycloaddition is the Diels-Alder (D-A) reaction. The cycloaddition of alkenes and dienes is a very useful method for forming substituted cyclohexenes.1... 

In Chapter 10 of Part A, the mechanistic classification of 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions as concerted cycloadditions was developed. Dipolar cycloaddition reactions are useful both for syntheses of heterocyclic compounds and for carbon-carbon bond formation. Table 6.2 lists some of the types of molecules that are capable of dipolar cycloaddition. These molecules, which are called 1,3-dipoles, have it electron systems that are isoelectronic with allyl or propargyl anions, consisting of two filled and one empty orbital. Each molecule has at least one charge-separated resonance structure with opposite charges in a 1,3-relationship, and it is this structural feature that leads to the name 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions for this class of reactions.136... 

Concerted cycloaddition reactions provide the most powerful way to stereospecific creations of new chiral centers in organic molecules. In a manner similar to the Diels-Alder reaction, a pair of diastereoisomers, the endo and exo isomers, can be formed (Eq. 8.45). The endo selectivity in the Diels-Alder arises from secondary 7I-orbital interactions, but this interaction is small in 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition. If alkenes, or 1,3-dipoles, contain a chiral center(s), the approach toward one of the faces of the alkene or the 1,3-dipole can be discriminated. Such selectivity is defined as diastereomeric excess (de). 

Construction of isolated or benzannulated five-membered rings of NHPs can be accomplished by means of various condensation or cycloaddition reactions all of which involve interaction of an electrophilic Pj and a nucleophilic C2N2 building block. Salts containing 1,3,2-diazaphospholide anions or 1,3,2-diazaphospholenium cations can be directly accessed by some of these reactions but the products are in most cases neutral 1,3,2-diazaphospholes or NHP. A particularly concerted effort has been directed toward the synthesis of P-halogen-substituted NHP which are capable of undergoing further reactions via halide displacement or halide abstraction and serve thus as entry points for the preparation of a wide variety of neutral and cationic NHP derivatives. 1,3,2-Diazaphospholide anions are normally accessed by deprotonation of suitable iV-H-substituted precursors. 

A theoretical study based on PM3 frontier molecular orbital (FMO) and potential energy surface (PES) analysis at the restricted Hartree-Fock (RHF)/6-31+G level was performed to examine the reaction of l-amino-2-ethoxycarbonyl-pyridinium mesitylenesulfonate and acrylonitrile in the presence of Hilnig s base leading to the formation of l,2-dihydropyrido[l,2-A]pyridazinium inner salt 17 <1999JOC9001>. The calculations indicated that both the [3+2] cycloaddition reaction and the ring expansion occurred in a concerted manner rather than through a stepwise mechanism via a zwitterionic intermediate 16 (Scheme 1). 

Jug and co-workers investigated the mechanism of cycloaddition reactions of indolizines to give substituted cycl[3,2,2]azines <1998JPO201>. Intermediates in this reaction are not isolated, giving evidence for a concerted [8+2] cycloaddition, which was consistent with results of previous theoretical calculations <1984CHEC(4)443>. Calculations were performed for a number of substituted ethenes <1998JPO201>. For methyl acrylate, acrylonitrile, and ethene, the concerted [8+2] mechanism seems favored. However, from both ab initio and semi-empirical calculations of transition states they concluded that reaction with nitroethene proceeded via a two-step intermolecular electrophilic addition/cyclization route, and dimethylaminoethene via an unprecedented two-step nucleophilic addition/cyclization mechanism (Equation 1). 

In cycloaddition reactions few examples have been described in which changes in selectivity have been observed on use of microwave irradiation. In concerted pro-... 

Eq. 17 is meant to represent the possibility for a concerted formation of oxetane product. A problem that always exist in cycloadditions is the question of whether the reaction takes place by a two-step biradical reaction pathway or through a concerted mechanism. Such questions have not even been resolved for purely thermal reactions. 4> A recent speculation on this point proposes almost universal concertedness for all cycloaddition reactions. 79> In that work, mixed stereochemistry in the products of [2+2] cycloaddition reactions is generally attributed to a mixture of two concerted reactions, suprafacial-suprafacial, and supra-facial-antarafacial. It will be seen later that the PMO calculations generally do not support this idea. A mixture of biradical and concerted reactions is in better agreement with experimental facts. 

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