Cyclooctatetraene compounds

Intermolecular electron-transfer rates have been studied for uranocene and substituted derivatives of uranium, neptunium, and plutonium by examining the variable-temperature NMR spectra of mixtures of (CgH8)2An and [(C8Hg)2An]. In all cases, electron-transfer rates are rapid. Specific rates could not be derived for uranium and plutonium derivatives owing to the small chemical shift differences between analogous An(fV) and An(III) compounds, but in the case of (f-BuC8H7)2Np, the rate has been estimated to be of the same order of magnitude as comparable lanthanide cyclooctatetraene compounds ( 10 s ). ... 

Another route to mono-cyclooctAtetraene compounds is cleavage of one ring from the bis-COT complexes by protonation. Kablitz and Wilke have prepared (C0T)ZrCl2 and its THF adduct in this manner (20). 

Under similar conditions, the related cyclooctatetraene compound 42 affords /x-alkylidene complexes 43," which react further with HBF4.Et20 to give //-alkylidyne complexes 44 (Equation (7))." The latter have been shown to react with a wide range of nucleophiles, aspects of which are summarized in Scheme Most attack the... 

The same thought occurred to early chemists However the complete absence of natu rally occurring compounds based on cyclobutadiene and cyclooctatetraene contrasted starkly with the abundance of compounds containing a benzene unit Attempts to syn thesize cyclobutadiene and cyclooctatetraene met with failure and reinforced the grow mg conviction that these compounds would prove to be quite unlike benzene if m fact they could be isolated at all... 

Thus cyclobutadiene like cyclooctatetraene is not aromatic More than this cyclo butadiene is even less stable than its Lewis structure would suggest It belongs to a class of compounds called antiaromatic An antiaromatic compound is one that is destabi lized by cyclic conjugation... 

Cuprous salts catalyze the oligomerization of acetylene to vinylacetylene and divinylacetylene (38). The former compound is the raw material for the production of chloroprene monomer and polymers derived from it. Nickel catalysts with the appropriate ligands smoothly convert acetylene to benzene (39) or 1,3,5,7-cyclooctatetraene (40—42). Polymer formation accompanies these transition-metal catalyzed syntheses. 

CyclooctatetraenylCompounds. Sandwich-type complexes of cyclooctatetraene (COT), CgH g, are well known. The chemistry of thorium—COT complexes is similar to that of its Cp analogues in steric number and electronic configurations. Thorocene [12702-09-9], COT2Th, (16), the simplest of the COT derivatives, has been prepared by the interaction of ThCl [10026-08-1] and two equivalents of K CgHg. Thorocene derivatives with alkyl-, sdyl-, and aryl-substituted COT ligands have also been described. These compounds are thermally stable, air-sensitive, and appear to have substantial ionic character. 

Two major review articles deal generally with aza analogs of cyclooctatetraenes,4 5 while specific classes of compounds arc presented in this section. 

Connelly et al. (1979) investigated the reactions of arenediazonium salts with cyclooctatetraene (cot) and some of its transition metal compounds. Free cyclooc-... 

Homoaromatic Compounds. When cyclooctatetraene is dissolved in concentrated H2SO4, a proton adds to one of the double bonds to form the homotropylium ion (107). In this species an aromatic sextet is spread over seven carbons, as in the tropylium ion. The eighth carbon is an sp carbon and so cannot take part in the aromaticity. The NMR spectra show the presence of a diatropic ring current H/, is found at 5= - 0.3 at 5.1 6 Hj and H7 at... 

Among the compounds that form complexes with silver and other metals are benzene (represented as in 9) and cyclooctatetraene. When the metal involved has a coordination number >1, more than one donor molecule participates. In many cases, this extra electron density comes from CO groups, which in these eomplexes are called carbonyl groups. Thus, benzene-chromium tricarbonyl (10) is a stable compound. Three arrows are shown, since all three aromatic bonding orbitals contribute some electron density to the metal. Metallocenes (p. 53) may be considered a special case of this type of complex, although the bonding in metallocenes is much stronger. 

Uranium complexes analogous to these compounds were also described, but with the cot (cyclooctatetraene dianion) ligand rather than the Cp or Cp ones. Both the dianionic U(IV) [(cot)U(dddt)2]2 [47] and monoanionic U(V) [(cot)U(dddt)2] [48] complexes were isolated and structurally characterized (Fig. 5). Spectacular distortions of the US2C2 metallacycles were rationalized on the basis of DFT calculations, which reproduced the spectacular folding of the endo US2C2 metalla-cycle when the dianionic species undergoes an oxidation. 

When starting this chapter we promised ourselves and the reader not to consider benzene and its derivatives. Cyclooctatetraene [or more properly (Z,Z,Z,Z)-l,3,5,7-cyclooctatetra-ene, 147] is generally recognized as a polyene and so this latter compound would appear to belong here. How can we do one and not the other Therefore, in this concluding section of the chapter, we briefly discuss the enthalpies of formation of some of the... 

If the cycloaddition and cycloreversion steps occurred under the same conditions, an equilibrium would establish and a mixture of reactant and product olefins be obtained, which is a severe limitation to its synthetic use. In many cases, however, the two steps can very well be separated, with the cycloreversion under totally different conditions often showing pronounced regioselectivity, e.g. for thermodynamic reasons (product vs. reactant stability), and this type of olefin metathesis has been successfully applied to organic synthesis. In fact, this aspect of the synthetic application of four-membered ring compounds has recently aroused considerable attention, as it leads the way to their transformation into other useful intermediates. For example aza[18]annulene (371) could be synthesized utilizing a sequence of [2 + 2] cycloaddition and cycloreversion. (369), one of the dimers obtained from cyclooctatetraene upon heating to 100 °C, was transformed by carbethoxycarbene addition to two tetracyclic carboxylates, which subsequently lead to the isomeric azides (368) and (370). Upon direct photolysis of these, (371) was obtained in 25 and 28% yield, respectively 127). Aza[14]annulene could be synthesized in a similar fashion I28). 

On the basis of topological criteria, Balaban predicted in 1965 the aromaticity of compounds with 10-jr-electron systems in eight-membered rings with two heteroatoms (analogous to the cyclooctatetraene dianion).250 Schroth and co-workers were among the first to investigate the systems experimentally, and they synthesized compounds 210—213 (Scheme... 

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