Diamondoid hydrocarbons synthesis

By analogy with adamantane, direct, ionic substitution reactions may be expected to be equally as effective for the synthesis of derivatives of other diamondoid hydrocarbons (e.g. diamantane and triamantane). In these cases, however, a larger number of isomers are possible. Diamantane has one methylene and two nonequivalent bridgehead positions while triamantane has four of each. 

Due to their demanding synthesis, diamondoids are helpful models to study structure-activity relationships in carbocations and radicals, to develop empirical computational methods for hydrocarbons, and to investigate orientational disorders in molecular crystals as well [5,32]. 

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