Electron poor

FMO theory requires that a HOMO of one reactant has to be correlated with the LUMO of the other reactant. The decision between the two alternatives - i.e., from which reactant the HOMO should be taken - is made on the basis of which is the smaller energy difference in our case the HOMO of the electron rich diene, 3.1, has to be correlated with the LUMO of the electron-poor dienophile, 3.2. The smaller this HOMO-LUMO gap, the higher the reactivity will be. With the HOMO and LUMO fixed, the orbital coefficients of these two orbitals can explain the regios-electivity of the reaction, which strongly favors the formation of 3.3 over 3.4. 

An alternative drivirg force could involve a donor - acceptor interaction. The electron-poor pyridine ring that is coordinated to the copper cation can act as electron acceptor with respect to the aromatic ring of the -amino acid. The fact that donating substituents on the amino acid increase the efficiency... 

FIGURE 6 4 Electro static potential maps of HCI and ethylene When the two react the interaction is between the electron rich site (red) of ethylene and electron poor region (blue) of HCI The electron rich region of ethylene is associ ated with the tt electrons of the double bond and H IS the electron poor atom of HCI... 

The electrophile (E ) m this reaction is mtromum ion (0=N=0) The charge distn bution m mtromum ion is evident both m its Lewis structure and m the electrostatic potential map of Figure 12 2 There we see the complementary relationship between the electron poor region near nitrogen of NO, and the electron rich region associated with the TT electrons of benzene... 

FIGURE 14 1 Electro static potential maps of (a) methyl fluoride and (b) methyllithium The electron distribution is reversed in the two compounds Carbon IS electron poor (blue) in methyl fluoride but electron rich (red) in methyllithium... 

Lone pair donation from the hydroxyl oxygen makes the carbonyl group less elec trophilic than that of an aldehyde or ketone The graphic that opened this chapter is an electrostatic potential map of formic acid that shows the most electron rich site to be the oxygen of the carbonyl group and the most electron poor one to be as expected the OH hydrogen... 

Simple olefins do not usually add well to ketenes except to ketoketenes and halogenated ketenes. Mild Lewis acids as well as bases often increase the rate of the cyclo addition. The cycloaddition of ketenes to acetylenes yields cyclobutenones. The cycloaddition of ketenes to aldehydes and ketones yields oxetanones. The reaction can also be base-cataly2ed if the reactant contains electron-poor carbonyl bonds. Optically active bases lead to chiral lactones (41—43). The dimerization of the ketene itself is the main competing reaction. This process precludes the parent compound ketene from many [2 + 2] cyclo additions. Intramolecular cycloaddition reactions of ketenes are known and have been reviewed (7). 

The stabilization of chloromethoxycarbene (234) was intensively studied. It is formed from diazirine (233) in a first order reaction with fi/2 = 34h at 20 C. It reacts either as a nucleophile, adding to electron poor alkenes like acrylonitrile with cyclopropanation, or as an electrophile, giving diphenylcyclopropenone with the electron rich diphenylacetylene. In the absence of reaction partners (234) decomposes to carbon monoxide and methyl chloride (78TL1931, 1935). 

Ph3C BF, CH2CI2 or CH3CN, H2O. In this case the reaction with DDQ failed to go to completion. This was attributed to the reduced electron density on the aromatic ring because of its attachment at the more electron-poor anomeric center. 

For the alkali metal doped Cgo compounds, charge transfer of one electron per M atom to the Cgo molecule occurs, resulting in M+ ions at the tetrahedral and/or octahedral symmetry interstices of the cubic Cgo host structure. For the composition MaCgg, the resulting metallic crystal has basically the fee structure (see Fig. 2). Within this structure the alkali metal ions can sit on either tetragonal symmetry (1/4,1/4,1/4) sites, which are twice as numerous as the octahedral (l/2,0,0) sites (referenced to a simple cubic coordinate system). The electron-poor alkali metal ions tend to lie adjacent to a C=C double... 

Similarly, carboxylic acid and ester groups tend to direct chlorination to the / and v positions, because attack at the a position is electronically disfavored. The polar effect is attributed to the fact that the chlorine atom is an electrophilic species, and the relatively electron-poor carbon atom adjacent to an electron-withdrawing group is avoided. The effect of an electron-withdrawing substituent is to decrease the electron density at the potential radical site. Because the chlorine atom is highly reactive, the reaction would be expected to have a very early transition state, and this electrostatic effect predominates over the stabilizing substituent effect on the intermediate. The substituent effect dominates the kinetic selectivity of the reaction, and the relative stability of the radical intermediate has relatively little influence. 

A more efficient agent than peroxy compounds for the epoxidation of fluoro-olefins with nonfluonnated double bond is the hypofluorous acid-acetomtrile complex [22] Perfluoroalkylethenes react with this agent at room temperature within 2-3 h with moderate yields (equation 13), whereas olefins with strongly electron-deficient double bond or electron-poor, sterically hindered olefins, for example l,2-bis(perfluorobutyl)ethene and perfluoro-(l-alkylethyl)ethenes, are practically inert [22] Epoxidation of a mixture of 3 perfluoroalkyl-1-propenes at 0 C IS finished after 10 mm in 80% yield [22] The trifluorovinyl group in partially fluorinated dienes is not affected by this agent [22] (equation 13)... 

Direct perfluoroalkylatwn of electron poor aromatic and heterocyclic systems with perfluorocarboxylic acids is mediated by xenon difluonde [165] (equation 142)... 

Hexafluoropropylene oxide (HFPO), which decomposes reversibly to di-fluorocarbene and trifluoroacetyl fluonde with a half-life of about 6 h at 165 °C [30], is a versatile reagent. Its pyrolysis with olefins is normally carried out at 180-2(X) °C, and yields are usually good with either electron-nch or electron-poor olefins [31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37] (Table 2). The high reaction temperatures allow the eyclopropanation of very electron poor double bonds [58] (equation 10) but can result in rearranged products [39, 40, 41] (equations 11-13)... 

Various carbene-transfer reactions can be used with both electron-rich and electron-poor alkynes to make fluorinated cyclopropenes [9. 13, 79, 80, 81, 82] (Table 4). Haloacetylenes are too thermally unstable for most cycloaddition conditions, and simple fluorinated cyclopropenes are made by other methods [32, 45, 83, 84] (equations 30-32). 

On the other hand these are compounds with marked 1,4-dipolar character, having electron lone pairs at the terminal heteroatom and an electrophilic center at C-4 Consequently, they can react with polarized multiple bond systems, even when these are extremely electron-poor [225]... 

As useful as molecular models are, they are limited in that they only show the location of the atoms and the space they occupy. Another important dimension to molecular structure is its electron distribution. We introduced electrostatic potential maps in Section 1.5 as a way of illustrating charge distribution and will continue to use them throughout the text. Figure 1.6(d) shows the electrostatic potential map of methane. Its overall shape is similar to the volume occupied by the space-filling model. The most electron-rich regions are closer to carbon and the most electron-poor ones are closer to the hydrogens. 

Addition reactions — The fullerenes Ceo and C70 react as electron-poor olefins with fairly localized double bonds. Addition occurs preferentially at a double bond common to two annelated 6-membered rings (a 6 6 bond) and a second addition, when it occurs is generally in the opposite hemisphere. The first characteriz-able mono adduct was [C6oOs04(NC5H4Bu )2]. formed by reacting Cgo with an excess of OSO4 in 4-butylpyridine. The structure is shown in... 

None of the problems are of the flash card variety. Be prepared to look at molecules, to move them, to measure them, to animate them, to find regions that are electron poor or electron rich, and most of all, to think about their chemistry. We guarantee that, after this, you will never look at molecules the same way again ... 

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