Dienophiles singlet oxygen

The most powerful dienophile is singlet oxygen, produced by the dye-sensitized irradiation of oxygen. Its cycloaddition to dienes to give ewrfo-peroxides (equation 86) has long been known76. 

The most powerful azo dienophile is the cisoid 4-phenyl-l,2,4-triazoline-3,5-dione 264, which is surpassed in reactivity only by singlet oxygen. The dione adds rapidly to all types of dienes and the process can be followed visually since the bright-red color of the reagent is discharged when the reaction is complete136. 

Due to the formal analogy to the classical Diels-Alder reaction, the mechanism of cyclic peroxide formation through cycloadditions of 1,3-dienes with O2 was considered for a long time to involve a concerted suprafacial [4 4- 2]-cycloaddition of a super-dienophile, namely a singlet oxygen to 1,3-dienic system In such a case, the concerted or almost concerted cycloaddition must be c -stereospecific and the stereochemical properties of the diene must be reflected in the three-dimensional structure of cyclic peroxide according to well-defined rules. Indeed, it was found in early stereochemical... 

Table 6(a) [4+2] Cycloaddition of dienes with singlet oxygen as dienophile... 

While both hydrogenation and epoxidation reactions of (7) (and substituted forms) occur on the oxepin valence tautomer, cycloaddition reactions proceed more readily on the arene oxide form (where the diene is closer to planarity). Thus the dienophiles DM AD and maleic anhydride (MA) readily yielded [4 + 2] cycloadducts with (7) as shown in Scheme 22 (67AG(E)385). A similar type of singlet oxygen cycloaddition reaction gave an unstable endoperoxide (106) which upon heating yielded trans-benzene trioxide quantitatively (equation 14). (75JOC3743). 

As in 4-9, it is not the ground-state oxygen (the triplet), that reacts, but the excited singlet state,782 so the reaction is actually a Diels-Alder reaction (see 5-47) with singlet oxygen as dienophile 783... 

This indicates that the dienophilic reactivity of singlet oxygen surpasses the other two modes of reaction (formation of hydroperoxides and 1,2-dioxetanes). 

Conjugated dienes (and compounds that behave like conjugated dienes in the Diels-Alder reaction) react with singlet oxygen to form cyclic peroxides as if molecular oxygen acted as a dienophile. The yields of the peroxides, prepared by photochemical oxidation [13, 55] or by chemical oxidations with hydrogen peroxide and sodium hypochlorite, alkaline hydrogen peroxide and bromine, alkaline salts of peroxy acids [14, 26], or the ozonide of triphenyl phosphite [29], are comparable. 

The cyclopentadienyltin(IV) compounds undergo Diels-Alder cycloadditions with reactive dienophiles such as maleic anhydride, diethyl maleate, and diethyl acetylenedi-carboxylate," and an endoperoxide has been identified from the reaction with singlet oxygen.123... 

ITS. J. Hathaway, and L. A. Paquette, Stereochemical parallelism between dienophilic capture and singlet oxygenation of isodicyclopentadiene derivatives. Tetrahedron 41, 2037-2043 (1985). 

The oxazoles also display a number of characteristics that are typical of the furans and are explained by the structural similarity of these heterocyclic systems. The ease with which they undergo Diels-Alder reactions with dienophiles and autooxidation with singlet oxygen (see Sections IV, D and E) clearly demonstrates that oxazoles are not fully aromatic. This fact and ultraviolet data (Section III, E) suggest that oxazoles should be considered partly as conjugated dienes. 

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